The kitchen
This country-house, situated in a panoramic position in the hinterland of the ager stabianus on the top of a hill overlooking the plane sloping towards Pompeii, has been only partially excavated. It is possible to visit the private section only of the building where activities were frenzied at the moment of the eruption as documented by two skeletons found crouched at the bottom of an external drain as well as by the high quantity of household ware and agricultural tools found in situ.
The large rectangular room was almost certainly the kitchen of the house: there is in fact a small oven built against the eastern wall made of a rectangular base and with a half circular vault made by reusing a broken jar (dolium) and used for baking bread and heating dishes.
Outside this room there is a square surface where dishes were probably prepared. The other room does not resemble a traditional kitchen since the cooking surface is missing, though the objects found here lead us to think of a place where seasonal workers would gather to prepare their meals and would also sleep or spend their nights indoors and warmed in front of the fireplace. The same arrangement is found in another country house of the same area, namely Villa Regina in Boscoreale, where there is an oven in the kitchen for baking bread and in place of the cooking surface there is a rectangular fireplace on the ground. There are numerous finds of earthen and bronze kitchenware found around the fireplace and scattered across the floor or placed on the ground along the walls. Above the oven there are holes for housing wooden shelves, which were quite common in kitchens, where ready-made dishes were placed before being consumed. Here too, as in the kitchen of Villa S. Marco in Castellammare di Stabia, countless graffiti (mainly numbers) have been found.
Source
Soprintendenza
Archeologica di Pompei |
