I am going to do a bit of ruthless merchandising for our new Pompeii book here, as I am very happy it has finally arrived, and proud of the result. ‘Pompeii. Art, Industry, Infrastructure’, edited by Eric Poehler, Miko Flohr, and Kevin Cole, and published by Oxbow Books here in Oxford, is available now. Now starts the big waiting for the reviewers to rip it apart…
More than 250 years after its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city’s art, industry and infrastructure.
The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture. The famous cupid’s frieze from the house of the Vettii is given a novel and intelligent reinterpretation. The place of industry at Pompeii, in both the physical and economic landscapes has long been overlooked. The chapters on building practice in inhabited houses, on the presence of fulling workshops in atrium houses, and on the urban pottery industry serve as successful contributions to a more complete understanding of the life of the ancient city. Finally, this volume breaks new ground in the consideration of the urban infrastructure of Pompeii, a topic that has won serious attention only in the last decades, but one that is playing an increasingly central role in Pompeian studies. The final three chapters offer a reassessment of the Pompeian street network, a scientific analysis of the amount of lead in Pompeian drinking water, and a thorough analysis of the water infrastructure around the forum that supported its architectural transformation in the last decades before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79
In case you are interested – you can order it online: Oxbow (uk) – Amazon (us)
Table of Contents
Art
Beyond Painting in Pompeii’s Houses: Wall Ornaments and their Patrons (Jessica Powers)
The Sculpture of the Casa di Octavius Quartio at Pompeii (Francesca Tronchin)
Porticus and Cryptoporticus in Luxury Villa Architecture (Mantha Zarmakoupi)
Playful Workers. The Cupid Frieze in the Casa dei Vettii (Francesco de Angelis)
Industry
Disruption or Continuity? The Spatio-Visual Evidence of Post Earthquake Pompeii (Michael Anderson)
Reconsidering the atrium House: Domestic fullonicae at Pompeii (Miko Flohr)
Pottery Production in Pompeii: an Overview (Myles McCallum)
Infrastructure
What was a via? An Integrated Archaeological and Textual Approach (Alan Kaiser)
Lead Contamination in the Drinking Water of Pompeii (Duncan Keenan-Jones)
Practical Matters: Infrastructure and the Planning for the Post-Earthquake Forum at Pompeii (Eric Poehler)
Miko Flohr, 11/05/2011