This excavation and survey of a large house at Pompeii investigates relationships between domestic material culture, social performance, and historical change. Pompeii is central to any account of Roman daily life, but much of its archaeological record results from early excavations conducted before modern field methods and recording practices. This project combines innovative archaeological field methods with a rigorous approach to legacy data, applying new detection and recording techniques while also salvaging and synthesizing information from early excavations.

As a result, this project provides an exciting new opportunity to investigate the relationship between the “macro-scale” of ancient historical change and the “micro-scale” of daily domestic experience. Scholars have historically treated changes in household material culture as a reaction to developments that “really” took place in other spheres, such as the political or military events that dominate traditional historical narratives. However, recent research has questioned such assumptions, suggesting that domestic material culture also wielded an agency of its own. By investigating change over time in the material conditions of life at the Casa della Regina Carolina site, we seek to explore the relationships between domestic material culture, social performance, and historical change.