Introduction

Abstract

As outlined in the introduction to the first volume of this series, this third volume contributes to the investigations of the British project in Pompeii with a study of the finds excavated from the Insula del Menandro during the 1920s and 1930s. It includes a systematic documentation and functional analysis of these artefactual remains, that can enrich our understanding of Pompeian society. My involvement with this project grew out of my study of the house-floor assemblages in thirty Pompeian ‘atrium’ houses. This earlier study reappraised past interpretations of the depositional processes at Pompeii and past spatial and functional analyses of Pompeian domestic behaviour. It used the published reports, excavation notebooks and inventories to compile a primary database of some 16,000 Pompeian artefacts, which were systematically analysed to assess patterns of residential behaviour and abandonment processes, within each house and within each room type. This study relied on the documentation of the finds from these houses that had been carried out at the time of excavation. It soon became apparent that, to understand the precise types of artefacts, described in Italian in the reports, and their functional characteristics, greater familiarity with the actual artefacts was needed. Study of the artefacts from the Insula del Menandro, whose four larger ‘atrium’ houses (the Casa del Menandro, Casa del Fabbro, House I 10,8, and Casa degli Amanti) were included in my previous study, provided an opportunity for a more in-depth knowledge of Pompeian artefacts. A finds catalogue was, therefore, compiled which catalogued not only the artefacts excavated from these four houses but also those from the other establishments in this Insula—Houses I 10,1, I 10,3, and I 10,18 and Units I 10,5–6, I 10,9, I 10,12, and I 10,13. This catalogue is the core data for this volume. Unlike more standard studies of the ‘loose finds’ from excavations of Roman period sites, this catalogue does not consist of a series of artefactual typologies. A common, although not exclusive, pattern of post-excavation processing of excavated artefacts is to divide excavated artefacts into what are now well-established categories, selected largely on criteria attributable to the formal, or manufacturing, characteristics of the artefact (for example, pottery, glass, metal).