The main objective of the “Piastrina – research on bakeries in Roman Italy” project is to define, on an archaeological basis, the chronology of the transition from purely domestic to commercial bread making, following the evolution of techniques, in particular in relation to the oven, and the organisation of productive spaces.

The first step towards this aim is the creation of an exhaustive catalogue, based mainly on the sites of Pompeii and Ostia, of the various types of equipment present in the workshops: mill-stones, mixers, work tables, ovens, water supply and furnishings. Using this catalogue it will be possible to propose a faithful reconstruction of the production line in bakeries. From this it will then be possible to make a spatial analysis of the organisation of the production areas which takes into account the available spaces and how they were used to satisfy the necessities of the production line.
This analysis will be necessary at Pompeii in particular, as the bakeries were located in spaces that were originally domestic and thus had to be adapted for the new activity. These problems were increased by the sismic activity which affected the city during its final years.

As regards Pompeii, a production of excess flour may be hypothesized from the absence of mill-stones in some spaces which had an oven and from the existence of premises that only undertook milling. Besides, the presence of tabernae at the front of a number of bakeries suggests the sale of freshly baked bread straight out of the oven. It is also necessary to consider the possible sales outlets used by bakeries which were not attached to a taberna.

The three objectives of the 2008 campaign were: to define the chronology for the setting up of the bakery; the understanding of how the mill room functioned; the understanding of the transformations within the bakery. Through the analysis of scattered elements such as half of a mill-stone reused twice – first as a mixer and then as an element within the water supply system -, or the different layouts of the mills– only three out of four had a basalt floor –, it can already be suggested that the bakery increased its size over several phases. The reinterpretation of a more or less unpublished electoral inscription ([A].[Tre]bium A[edilem), painted on the west wall of the mill room, and the blocking, in the same room of a door of the same width as those of shops, suggests that the bakery had a commercial outlet on Via dell’Abbondanza until the second half of the 70s A.D. The vegetal remains preserved in the beaten floors of the same room showed how olive stones were used as fuel for bread baking. Despite construction work still being in progress at the moment of the eruption it appears that the bakery was functioning – perhaps at a reduced level – until the last moment.