An Overview of the
Pottery Industry at Pompeii

Myles McCallum (University of Nevada, Reno)

Although excavations have been carried out at Pompeii for the past 250 years, little attention has been paid to the pottery from these excavations until the last two decades.  Renewed interest in this subject has been sparked during the tenures of site superintendents Dott. Conticello and Guzzo, a period of archaeological activity which has seen substantial excavation below the AD 79 levels in order to provide scientific evidence for the early history of the town.  To date, however, there has been no synthesis of the present evidence for the organization of pottery industry at Pompeii during the late republican and imperial periods.  This paper addresses this lacuna by presenting an overview of the extant evidence for the production and distribution of pottery at Pompeii during the last century of the city’s existence.  The presentation draws on recent archaeological discoveries in Insulae V, VI, and VII, geophysical work done in the immediate vicinity of the town, archeometric pottery sourcing performed on various classes of locally produced pottery, excavations of pottery kilns from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries both inside the city walls and along the Herculaneum Way, and epigraphic evidence for craft good distribution.  The evidence suggests that there was a well-developed, low-level market system in place into which specialized, workshop-scale pottery production fed during the imperial period at Pompeii.  Also, evidence for this production and distribution at Pompeii is likely indicative of the production of and trade in craft goods generally during the last century of the town’s existence.