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What can a Pompeii bakery tell us about a working day?

The bakery known as Popidio Prisco’s still offers clues to a working day: stone mills, an oven, and space in which food moved through successive stages. One absent feature is revealing too. The official excavation guide notes the missing sales counter and suggests alternatives to selling bread directly there, while keeping those alternatives tentative.

3–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • Which parts of a proposed workflow come from surviving objects, and which are reconstruction?
  • How do a bakery's layout, equipment, and surviving remains constrain a reconstruction of work at Pompeii?

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