VIII.7.5 (Trench 11000)

Trench 11000 occupied the front room of VIII.7.5, and included some minor cleaning at the interface between this space and its neighbouring room to the north. The entire room was excavated except for the central zone where a collapsed cistern made excavation impractical. The excavation of this room represents our first sub-surface investigations of this property. 

This room underwent two distinct phases of industrial occupation, each defined by tanks with earthen floor surfaces and datable to around the second century BCE.  Afterwards, a first commercial phase represented a dramatic reorganization of the activity within this space, but did nothing to change the physical layout.  The industrial features all went out of use and were replaced with features illustrative of the final commercial use of this space with a nice cocciopesto flooring.  In the northwest corner of the room, a shallow, rectangular basin was installed.  It was only a few centimetres in depth and had bevelled sides. 

At some point afterwards, the property seems to have been greatly rearranged, although it retained its commercial character.  This development was probably contingent upon the addition of an upper storey.  A very late feature in the southwest corner of the room may have been the first two stone steps of an otherwise wooden staircase that climbed west and then turned sharply and steeply to the north to access an upper floor.  This is currently the only visible access point to an upper floor within this property, otherwise represented by three sizable downpipes for upstairs toilets that seem to have all been installed in this late phase.  Additionally, a new cocciopesto floor was laid over the room, and a small oven/work surface suite was installed in the two small rooms to the north.  A grinding stone (the bottom of which was found overturned near the oven and the top which currently rests in the back of the property) also suggests that some small-scale baking occurred here in this commercial space in this final phase.  Perhaps most interestingly, the rectangular cocciopesto basin from the early commercial phase was punched through to install a sheered off amphora.  It did not serve as a soak-away feature however, as so many of this type do, as no holes within it provided drainage.  Instead, it was found to contain a very high proportion (around 15-20% of the entire matrix) of rodent bones.  Further analysis will be conducted on these biological remains to determine if they were the remains of pests or food, but a very preliminary hypothesis is that this may have been a very primitive rodent trap since its sheer, slippery sides would have prevented pests from escaping.  If this property was some type of cook-shop in its latest phase, and foodstuffs were present inside, it may have been necessary to have some manner for disposing of rats and mice. 

VIII.7.7-8 (Trench 12000)

This trench eventually covered the entire front room of property VIII.7.7-8 because of the appearance of two very large cisterns that prevented deeper exploration across much of the room.  The northern wall of the property here was built directly on top of the natural sterile soil that overlay the Pompeian lava plateau.  This long-standing central dividing wall of the insula marked the northern boundary of Trench 12000.  It seems to have been first associated with an earthen surface (surviving in only fragmentary form) which was bordered by two lines of lava stones arranged at a right angle.  The earthen surface and a fill layer below contained datable material from the second half of the second century BCE to the first half of the first century BCE. 

 In the industrial phase (dating somewhere between the second half of the second century BCE to the middle of the first century BCE), the property had a large tank with a plaster lining immediately inside the threshold.  It was identical to many of the other lined tanks seen elsewhere in the insula in previous years and aligned with the Via Stabiana (see especially trench 3000 in Devore and Ellis 2005).  It was later filled in with debris at the close of the industrial phase, leaving no indication as to its original purpose.  This phase also saw two drains constructed one after the other.

 As with Trench 11000, an industrial phase characterized by tanks and earthen floors was succeeded by a probable commercial phase characterized by cocciopesto flooring.  Possibly at this time a brick and mortar column and base were installed near the north-western corner, presumably stuccoed over to resemble a decorative marble column.  Perhaps the most dramatic instillation of this phase was a massive double cistern that would occupy roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the room.  Its construction heavily disturbed all previous phases and features as two massive holes were dug to accommodate two joined barrel-vaulted cisterns placed perpendicular to each other.  The purpose for the storage of such a surprising volume of water for a property of this size is unknown, as well as any other access point besides two small cistern heads along the southern wall.  Both cisterns were completely filled with modern debris and one was partially collapsed in modern times.

Two conjoined drains were installed in this phase. Both ran from a room in the middle of the property and were originally identified by Eschebach (to be verified in a future season; see Eschebach 1984, 63-66). We, however, found that these two drains ran parallel with each other down the long hallway between the middle room and the front room, the southern one built with an access hole to the cisterns. Immediately to the east of the cistern head, the two drains joined their canals and flowed out into the street as one drain. Because these drains came only from a middle room of the property, and by this phase the earlier drains to the north were extinct, we can postulate that it was sometime in this commercial phase that this property lost its back suite of rooms to its neighbours to the north. This reconfiguration may have also necessitated the reorganization of activity in this space, or vice versa.

The Tannery
VIII.7.9-11 (Trenches 13000 and 15000)

Trench 13000 extended over the entire rear room of property VIII.7.9-11 whose western wall abutted against the eastern suite of rooms of the Quadriporticus.  It was excavated to provide an understanding of the relationship between the property and the Quadriporticus.  Trench 15000 was an extension of trench 13000, opened after it was discovered that the time taken to complete the earlier trench would be limited due to spatial constraints (because of the uncovering of a masonry tannery across much of 13000).  Trench 15000 was then opened up in the room directly to the east of 13000 to reveal a series of partially exposed features and to further reveal the developmental history of the division wall with the southern neighbour at 7-8. 

Under the southern wall of Trench 13000, an early wall stub was found cut into natural soil.  It was sheered off later so only survived as a fragment of its former self, but may be another suggestion that there were spaces in the northern half of the insula that were later encroached upon by the construction of the public edifices of the Entertainment District.  If it delineated a corner of a room that extended to the west, it would be another area that was truncated to construct the Quadriporticus (see Trench 9000 in Ellis and Devore 2006; Ellis and Devore forthcoming). 

Once the Quadriporticus was built, a large industrial operation was installed against this western wall of the room, configured now for the first time.  Four massive circular tanks arranged in pairs in a cloverleaf pattern took up all but a thin strip at the southern end of 13000.  The earlier stub wall from the earlier phase was buried under the work surface.  Each tank had one or two foot-holes to allow people to climb in and out.  From their arrangement, they seem to have denoted a tannery (conceria) at the back of this property and so represent one of only two known tanneries in Pompeii (only one of five in all of Italy). 

Sometime in or after the late Augustan era, according to the ceramic data, the tannery tanks were filled with a massive dump of trash and sealed with a cocciopesto floor. An earlier small doorway was blocked up and beside it a larger doorway led into a large room that given its prominent position in the property, along the main access route from the front door and in its line-of-sight, was probably a dining space. The area of Trench 15000 was also given a fine cocciopesto floor, a staircase up to a second story, and access into the garden next door where there was another dining space with a masonry couch, water displays (also visible on this side of the wall) and small kitchen complex (see Trenches 2000 and 7000 in Ellis and Devore forthcoming; Ellis and Devore 2006; Devore and Ellis 2005). It was in this phase that this property probably acquired the rear suite of rooms at the back of the neighbouring property to the south. It is possible that this newly extended property was a restaurant, guild-hall, or some other place centred on dining. It also, perhaps even more strongly than the other trenches we have excavated, illustrates the dramatic abandonment of industrial workspaces in favour of those given over to commercial or domestic functions.

The Porta Stabia Sidewalk (Trench 14000)

Trench 14000 was a reopening of trench 10000 from the 2006 season (see Ellis and Devore 2006).  This trench was reopened to provide a more complete stratigraphic sequence associated with the construction of the street-side shrine, the phasing of the sidewalk, and the construction of the Porta Stabia itself.  The trench was therefore extended further to the north as far as the arched gate, and south, as far as the tomb of Marcus Tullius, and was excavated more deeply to reveal the earlier sequence of deposits.  

The course of fortification and gate construction visible in Trench 14000 was constructed upon an early sequence of hard-packed earthen surfaces covering a deep sterile deposit of soil. Unfortunately in the narrow confines of Trench 14000, no datable pottery was recovered.

 The foundations of the Porta Stabia’s fortification gateway were laid directly on the earlier earthen surfaces.  Three tiers of large Sarno limestone blocks were piled up in a stepped formation.  Then the upper portion of the wall was built onto this foundation.  It is in this phase that the altar, small niche, and votive deposit discovered in Trench 10000 during the 2006 season were installed (see Ellis and Devore forthcoming; Ellis and Devore 2006).  It is interesting to note that at precisely the place where the later monumental gate (currently visible) joined the Sarno gateway, the gateway foundations in Sarno offered the same angle.  This means that from the beginning, the precise alignment and placement of the gate was preserved.  

 Sometime between the 3^rd and 2^nd centuries BCE, according to the ceramic data, the surface level of the cocciopesto sidewalk in the gateway was raised, bisecting the earlier altar and covering the semi-circular lump of stones and mortar.