Abstract of Project Funded for FY 2000
| The House of the Large Fountain at Pompeii
Ian M. Sutherland, Foreign Languages and Literatures Since 1983, I have been studying the domestic architecture of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Among its hundreds of buildings I have identified a particular type of house unique to Pompeii: it has two storeys, with an open, colonnaded room upstairs, called a cenaculum. The cenaculum is located either in the facade of the house, thus offering a view of the street in front, or it is in the interior of the house, with the colonnade opening to the central atrium. My long-term goal is to bring the cenaculum house into the main stream of our knowledge of Roman architecture by publishing four or five well-preserved and important examples. The first of these, and my current project, is called the House of the Large Fountain, selected because it is the oldest surviving example of a cenaculum house in Pompeii, dating to ca. 200 BC. This large and spacious mansion seems to have been the exemplar that inspired designs for other cenaculum houses over the next two and a half centuries. Heretofore my efforts have been directed toward documentation of the house, i.e. the recording of its condition, original and current. Much of the description and architectural history of the house have already been written. Many drawings of the house have been completed, including plans and elevations of its current condition, and of suggested reconstructions. Much photography has been done. The next phase of the project is actually to excavate. I propose to go to Pompeii in summer of 2000, to excavate part of the house where digging is required to determine the original design of the house and its subsequent development. |