Household Archaeology

The Pompeii Artifact Life History Project (PALHIP) carried out its tenth and final fieldwork season at Pompeii (Napoli), Italy, between June 30 and July 27, 2024.

The PALHIP team, which consisted of four persons (Ted Peña, Aaron Brown, Susanna Faas-Bush, Francesca LaPasta), completed its description of the portable artifacts recovered in the various residences in the block identified as Regio I, Insula 11 (I.11 in the Pompeii address system), expanding its coverage to include the items from residences I.11.11, I.11.12, I.11.13, I.11.14, I.11.15.9 and I.11.16.

For its ninth field season the Pompeii Artifact Life History Project advance its research on the residential properties in Insula (block) I.11 at Pompeii on various fronts. The team completed its evaluation of the portable artifacts and furniture components from the Casa della Venere in Bikini (I.11.6.7) and the unnamed bar/residence at I.11.1.2 stored at the Casa di Bacco storage facility.

Summer 2022 saw the long-delayed start of the NEH-funded project, "City life at Classic Maya Palenque, Mexico", a collaboration between UC Berkeley Professor Rosemary A. Joyce, Universidad Autonoma de México Professor Rodrigo Liendo, UNLV Assistant Professor Lisa Johnson, and Sapienza University of Roma Marie Curie Fellow Arianna Campiani. The team began excavations using fine-grained methodologies to explore household life in the residential sector of this World Heritage Site, the first systematic effort to understand urban organization and growth there.

My research investigates the human-environmental interactions of Prehispanic peoples in the Arenal region of Costa Rica. This area is an ideal location to look at resilient practices in the past, since domestic settlements in Arenal persevered through powerful volcanic eruptions that impacted the landscape every few centuries.