Laetitia Cavassa (Aix Marseille University)

APP Contact Person Luana Toniolo

The second pottery workshop in Pompeii functioning in 79 AD is inside the city, near Porta Nocera, and hosts two kilns and a settling tank. Oil lamps, oil lamp moulds, and over a hundred vases and pots (frittili) shaped on the wheel have been found.

The workshop consists of four rooms and covers an area of about 100 square metres. There are two kinds of kiln: the smallest is circular and its cooking floor is supported by a central pillar, whereas the largest kiln has a vertical chamber, a quadrangular shape, and a cooking floor held up by support arches. A potter's  heel was also found. It was formed by an Italic amphora fragment inserted into the ground, thus creating a cavity, at the centre of which were the negative remains of the fixed axle for the wheel.