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DOMESTIC SPACE IN THE ROMAN WORLD: POMPEII AND BEYOND. Edited by RAY LAURENCE and ANDREW WALLACE-HADRILL. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology (Supplementary Series 22). 1997. Pp. 240, 121 figs.
"DOMUS": EDILIZIA PRIVATA E SOCIETÀ POMPEIANA FRA III E I SECOLO A.C. By F. PESANDO. Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali ed ambientali. Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompeii (Monografie 12). 1997. Pp. 393, 93 figs.
THESE TWO BOOKS SET DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE in its context of urban behaviour and consciousness, and both view the Roman houses at Pompeii and elsewhere as surprisingly contemporary affairs. Houses are no longer viewed as "facts" but as settings for social, sexual, and political choreographies-expressions of will and desire by people and families for whom social status counted as much as economic clout.1 The authors and editors provide new ways of addressing the physical and historical evidence to construct modern pictures of ancient domestic milieux.
Domestic Space in the Roman World brings together papers presented at an international conference (University of Reading) in 1994. It is divided into two overlapping parts: the first, "Space and Society," includes the introduction and five articles on thematic aspects of Roman and late Roman houses and tombs, and the second part, "Pompeii: A Case Study," comprises seven articles on topics specific to Pompeii. Both are brought together by Ray Laurence's introduction ("Space and Text"), which adroitly lays out the intellectual problems associated with the analysis of space in houses, in cities, and in the landscape. Space is a secretion of society and an expression of identity, part of on-going social dialogues among traditions that were adapted (or invented) to fit new circumstances. Thus the "search for origins" in domestic architecture is fairly irrelevant compared to decisions about space and social meaning.
Michele George's contribution, "Servus and domus: The Slave in the Roman House," is part of her larger program of delineating, in art and architecture, the physical presence of people who were otherwise almost invisible. George reviews the evidence for slave-quarters in houses in Rome and Pompeii and compares the ubiquity of slaves to the relative absence of space allocated to them, concluding that their spatial absence indicates their socially negligible status, even though their economic importance was growing. Slaves were built into domestic space by...