Tuesday 18 January 2011

Cleaning the Laundries 2006-2008

With the appearance of the fieldwork report of our 2008 season on Fasti Online today, our Cleaning the Laundries project has come to a definitive end. The three year project aimed at studying the remains of the Pompeian fullonicae through surface cleaning. In three consecutive seasons, we studied nine workshops, and could not only confirm their identification as a fullery, but also got to know a lot more about their design, history and use, information that was hidden underneath some 10-15 cm of modern sand, dust and debris. We found a lot more than I expected: we were able to confirm the identification of three fullonicae that had not been identified earlier - V 1, 2, VI 3, 6 and IX 6 a.1 - and found highly significant information about the water systems and property situation of all the workshops we investigated. It was kind of fun, too. 

The fieldwork reports of all three seasons are online:
·         CTL 2006 was published in the Rivista di Studi Pompeiani; a PDF can be found here.
·         CTL 2007 is published as FOLD&R 108.
·         CTL 2008 is published as FOLD&R 214.

These reports together will probably also form the final publication of the project; I am not currently planning  a volume specifically dedicated to these nine workshops; instead, I will integrate the results of the study in the monograph I am currently preparing on the fullonicae of Roman Italy.  

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