A roof for the atrium of the House of the Greek Epigrams in Pompeii? A three-dimensional critical study

Abstract

Over the last few decades, a critical revision of prior scholarship concerning Roman domestic space has led to the reappraisal of the traditional account of the atrium suggesting a possibility for this space to be ‘unroofed’. Accordingly, scholars have proposed to look for a convergence of impulses previously cultivated in isolation combining new theoretical frameworks, and a careful examination of the material evidence. Concurrently, a renewed interest in the structure of logical reasoning has identified the inference to the best explanation (IBE) as an effective method to build unitary hypotheses from complex and multifarious sets of data in a transparent way. This paper illustrates how the methodology described can effectively be used to address issues concerning the roofing of the atrium. In particular, it applies a novel IBE-based model to the case study of the House of the Greek Epigrams and presents a 3D reconstruction as a result.