Economic Change in Pompeii

On January 23^rd we visited the excavated ruins of Pompeii, a flourishing port town destroyed and buried by the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Hayden and I presented a blog post from an archeological dig in Pompeii depicting the change in the use of space over time. The neighborhood of sorts was originally excavated centuries ago and any artifacts, like tools of machinery, removed. Archeologists today have to rely on structural remains left behind to determine the purpose of a space and the change in use of that space over time.

One excavated room showed the remains of multiple small tanks lined with a waterproof plaster, indicating some sort of wet industry, though the tanks were not large enough for typical wet industries such as tanning. In the 1800’s the room earned the name of “The soap factory,” though little evidence exists to support the name. Underneath the floor of the soap factory are the remains of several walls that once divided the large room into multiple smaller rooms. While we cannot say what the use of the multiple small rooms may have been their presence indicates a change in the use of the space.

Many other building in the area show a movement away from production-based industries, like soap making, towards traveler services, like inns and bars. One building determined to be an inn at the time of the 79 A.D. eruption, was shown to have been a blacksmith at some earlier time. As the floor of the inn was excavated round, blackened patches were found. These areas were swept with a magnet, revealing metals rich in iron and indicating the location of the blacksmith’s anvil. Another building in the same neighborhood showed the transition from wet-industry (as indicated by plaster-lined pits) to a bar.

The transition from industry to tourism occurred in Pompeii just as it has in many other locations in modern-day Italy. Preceding the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius, Pompeii transitioned from industry to bars and inns and today we see places like the Cinque Terre moving away from traditional industries (agriculture, in the case of the Cinque Terre) towards catering to tourists. While little or no written record of this change exists, we can interpret economic change from thousands-of-years-old ruins and see a pattern we recognize even today. 

A once-bustling street of Pompeii