Reviews for Roman Pompeii: Space and Society 2e

The average rating for Roman Pompeii: Space and Society 2e based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-22 00:00:00 Carol Cunningham This book is over 20 years old now and that is clearly reflected in the writing. I usually love everything to do with Pompeii ever since I had a skeleton dumped in front of me during a 1st year archaeology tutorial. However, I found this book frustrating. If I had read Wallace-Hadrill as a reference one more time I might have screamed. Sure, the guy is great, publishes widely and makes wonderful documentaries, but this publication seemed to rely heavily on his thoughts and the research felt less original because of it. I found some of the methodology frustrating. It is easy to use statistics to say what you want. In this instance, some of the streets were too long to compare as desired so they were chopped up into smaller sections to make it easier for correlation with less long streets....way to skew your results to fit your agenda. For all the things created by the author to illustrate and compare the random or non-random distribution of various building types and architectural features, a basic chi-squared analysis would have spat out the required data in a far more objective manner. I have a problem when archaeologists or historians say things like 'those requiring formality and distraction from the street wanted to live in this street within easy reach of the forum' p101. I'm sorry, but even with all the spatial evidence and analysis in the world, how do we know what people nearly 2000 years ago wanted or felt? We don't. We can infer the possibility of intent based on evidence, but that is all in my opinion. The author also has that terrible academic habit of dressing things up so they sound smart, but aren't really saying much at all. For instance, in the final chapter they state, 'in the end we must say that the Roman city consisted of the social actions of its inhabitants and visitors in space and time.' Translation...people moved through the city about their daily business. Insightful. So this publication fell rather flat for me primarily because I could see the potential for it to say so much more.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-22 00:00:00 Kevin Cunningham Very glad I read this. Really helpful in thinking about how the physical layout of Pompeii relates to the social use of the space.