The 2010 season for the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (PARP:PS) represented our sixth campaign of excavations during which three trenches were excavated across the extent of I.1.1-10. This expansion – both spatially and conceptually – to include insula I.1 on the eastern side of the via Stabiana proved an important development for the project. The generous invitation of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei to include insula I.1 in our research facilitates a yet more comprehensive and detailed analysis of an entire Pompeian neighbourhood.

The project opened three trenches across I.1.1-10 in the 2010 field season, each located in a separate property, and in rooms where at least part of the initial construction and/or partition wall between a neighbouring building were known. Four properties make up the insula, the principal activity for each appearing to have been based on hospitality, at least in their final manifestation. At this still very early stage of our study of I.1, and as we have seen across the via Stabiana at VIII.7, fish-salting and other light-industrial activities dominated the insula between the 2nd century BCE and the Augustan period (early 1st century CE), at which time the street-side rooms, especially, were converted more exclusively to retailing activities.

Along with the stratified excavations, the project continued several lines of integrated research. The careful collection and detailed analysis of the bio-archaeological record; the geological terrain of the area prior to, but also including, the earliest human presence; the integrated analysis of all of the finds from I.1 and VIII.7; and an architectural survey of the entire zone. All of this work was facilitated by a dynamic and robust digital infrastructure; our team was equipped with tablet computers (iPads) so that all of the data was collected using streamlined digital methods (a veritable ‘paperless project’).