ABSTRACT
The recent discovery of a bakery in the Casa Rustio Vero at Pompeii has revived a discussion about forced labor and punitive incarceration in Roman-era bakeries. The bakery was hidden in the back of the house and had bars on windows between the house and the bakery, restricting access into or out of the bakery. The excavators interpreted it as a ‘prison bakery’. The nature of forced labor in Roman bakeries is, in fact, as complicated as the actual bakeries themselves which vary from city to city and workshop to workshop. This paper explores the evidence, both textual and archaeological, for forced labor, punitive labor, and enslavement in bakeries, imagining how those different phenomena might graft onto bakeries employing varying sorts of production models.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Evan Levine and Caroline Cheung for advice and reading drafts. Thanks also to Mary Evelyn Farrior for observing that not all window gratings were in iron.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. They are called petrin in French and sometimes called kneading machines in Anglophone scholarship (Monteix Citation2016, 163; Wilson Citation2008; Wilson and Schorle Citation2009).
2. I.3.1; I.3.27; I.4.12–17; VI.2.6; VI.6.4–5; VI.6.17,20–21; VII.2.22; VII.12.7; VII.12.11; VII.12.13; VII.16.6&9 (Insula Occidentalis); VIII.4.26–27 & 29; IX.1.3&33; IX.3.10–12; IX.3.19–20; IX.5.4).
3. Bakeries are commonly found in Roman cities, for a selection of them see: Megara Hyblaea (Tréziny Citation2018, fig. 393), Volubilis (Benton Citation2020b; Leduc Citation2008, Citation2011), Banasa (Alaioud Citation2010, 577–81), Herculaneum (Maiuri Citation1958, 451–61; Deiss Citation1989, 122–24; Monteix Citation2010, 255–288; Wallace-Hadrill Citation2011, 275–77; and; Guidobaldi, Esposito, and Pedicini Citation2012, 183–9) Italica (CitationBustamante et al. 2014, 39–41 fig. 24; Caballos Rufino, Fatuarte, and Hidalgo Citation1999, 70; Caballos Rufino Citation2010, 90 fig. 7.7; Augusta Emerita (Bustamante et al. Citation2014, 38–39, 43–44 and fig. 22 and 27); Djemila (Ballu Citation1909, 77; Leschi Citation1953, 260; Allais Citation1954, 352; Amraoui Citation2017, 113–114, Thibilis Announa (Gsell Citation1918, 90; Amraoui Citation2017, 200–201).
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