What do sources reveal about the economy, trade and commercial life of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and how do historians reconstruct it from physical evidence?
Investigate and interpret sources for the economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including agriculture and the local hinterland, production and manufacture, retail and the role of shops, banking and finance, and the regional and Mediterranean trade networks revealed by amphorae, inscriptions, archaeological remains and the writing tablets of Caecilius Iucundus
A focused answer to the QCE Ancient History Unit 3 dot point on the economy of the Cities of Vesuvius. Covers agriculture and the hinterland, production and manufacture, retail and shops, banking and finance, and regional and Mediterranean trade, drawing on amphorae, the Caecilius Iucundus tablets, inscriptions and archaeological remains.
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What this dot point is asking
QCAA wants you to reconstruct the economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum from physical and written evidence. You should cover agriculture and the fertile hinterland, production and manufacture, retail and shops, banking and finance, and the regional and Mediterranean trade networks that linked the towns to the wider Roman world. The skill is using fragmentary commercial evidence, amphorae, financial tablets, workshop remains and inscriptions, to build a picture of how the towns made and moved wealth, and to judge what that evidence can and cannot show.
The answer
Agriculture and the hinterland
The land around Vesuvius was exceptionally fertile because of volcanic soils, and agriculture underpinned the regional economy. Villas in the countryside (such as the Villa of the Mysteries and the Villa Regina at Boscoreale) combined elite residence with working farms producing wine and olive oil. Wine was the dominant product: vineyards covered the slopes, and grape pips, root cavities, presses (torcularia) and dolia (large storage jars) recovered across the region attest to large-scale production. Grain, olives, fruit, vegetables and animals supplied both local consumption and export. The reconstruction of agriculture draws on carbonised plant remains, root cavities filled with plaster, farm buildings and equipment, and frescoes depicting rural produce.
Production and manufacture
Within the towns, manufacture was widespread. Pompeii had around 35 bakeries (pistrina), several with millstones, ovens and carbonised loaves still in place. Fulleries (fullonicae), such as the Fullery of Stephanus, cleaned, dyed and finished cloth using treading vats and urine as a cleaning agent, a significant local industry. The town was a major centre for garum, the fermented fish sauce, branded and exported by Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, whose name appears on amphorae and in a mosaic in his house. Potteries, lamp workshops, metalworking and lime production are all attested. The physical layout of premises, with workrooms behind or beside shop fronts, lets historians identify trades and reconstruct production processes.
Retail, shops and services
Pompeii's streets were lined with shops (tabernae), bars (thermopolia and popinae), inns and workshops, often built into the front rooms of houses. The thermopolia, with their masonry counters set with dolia for hot food and drink, served the large population without home kitchens. Painted shop signs, counters, stock found in place and the wear on thresholds all document a dense retail economy. The forum and the macellum (covered market) were the commercial heart, and the building funded by the priestess Eumachia on the forum is associated with the cloth trade. This retail density shows an economy oriented toward exchange and services, not just subsistence.
Banking and finance
Some of the richest evidence for the commercial economy comes from written financial records. The house of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, an auctioneer and banker, preserved a strongbox containing around 150 wax writing tablets recording his business: receipts, loans, auction transactions and tax payments, dated between the AD 50s and 62. These tablets are direct documentary evidence of credit, money-lending, auctioneering and the involvement of named individuals, including freedmen and slaves, in financial dealings. They show that the Pompeian economy ran on credit and contract, not just cash, and they preserve real names, dates and sums, a rare window into ancient business practice.
Regional and Mediterranean trade
Pompeii sat near the mouth of the Sarno river and had access to the bay, linking it to the regional and Mediterranean trade networks centred on the great port of Puteoli nearby. Amphorae are the key evidence for trade: their shapes indicate origin, and painted labels (tituli picti) and stamps record contents, producers and sometimes destinations. Wine and garum were exported; goods such as fine pottery, marble, exotic foods and luxury items were imported. Finds of objects from across the empire, including an Indian ivory statuette, show the reach of these networks. Reconstructing trade means reading amphora typologies, stamps and labels together with the distribution of imported goods.
The value and limits of the economic evidence
The economic evidence for the Cities of Vesuvius is unusually rich because the eruption froze a working economy in place. But it has limits. The record is a single moment, around AD 79, not a long-term series, and the AD 62 earthquake had disrupted the towns, so some workshops were under repair. Survival is uneven: durable goods, masonry counters and ceramics survive, while perishable goods and most documentary records do not, making the Caecilius Iucundus tablets exceptional. Early excavation lost context for many finds. Reconstruction therefore combines many fragmentary sources and is careful to distinguish what the evidence shows from what is inferred.