Basin

Thomas Staub

The basin is constructed in the north east corner of the room, against the east and the north wall, where it even covers an earlier layer of plaster (even if this wall, judging by some of the materials used, must belong to a quite late stage in the life span of the house).The basin is 1.42 m long, 0.67 m wide and in the inside 0.62 m deep. The walls are built of mainly lava- incertum, but contain also limestone, pieces of tiles and tufa. According to the discussion by Mau in Overbeck & Mau, the area above the basin was decorated with wall paintings, showing above a red soccle birds and plants painted on a yellow background. Both the inside and at least the southern outer side of the basin are covered by water proof plaster. The basin shows a sewer in its lower southern edge. This sewer is not, as it seems connected to a cistern of any kind; at least no traces of such an installation or its mouth can be or have been observed. Since no traces of calcareous sinter can be observed, it seems most plausible that the water used or collected here was pluvial water and not coming from the public water network of the town. The function of this basin still remains unsure: either it served as rain water collector — but than a connection to a cistern should be expected, or it was somehow involved in some productive activity, which probably took place here and in the adjacent room d. If the later hypothesis is correct, it could of course still have fulfilled the function to collect the rain falling down from the supposed open part of the roof over this corner of the room.