Emma Richard-Trémeau is undertaking a Collaborative Doctoral Award at the University of Durham and BSR. As part of her training, she spent a placement month at Falerii Novi, assisting with the care, washing and cataloguing of finds-and taking the opportunity to deepen her knowledge of ceramics through the specialist expertise of the team on site.
Her work offers a fascinating window into one of the most tangible aspects of Roman daily life: what people ate, how they cooked it, and how those practices changed over time.
Cooking in Roman Falerii Novi
The ceramic finds from Falerii Novi tell a rich story of diet and culinary practice. During the mid-imperial period, the assemblage is dominated by shallow, wide pans, some imported from Northern Africa, others produced locally in Italy, in what has traditionally been called “Pompeian” ware, though the name is something of a misnomer, as these vessels were made locally rather than at Pompeii. Both types share a similar function: cooking rich, fatty foods, particularly meats. Notably, some of these pans feature a distinctive red-slipped interior surface that acted as a non-stick coating – a Roman equivalent, in a sense, of a modern Teflon pan.
Alongside the frying pans, deeper cooking pots were used for more liquid-based preparations, like stews, soups, and other slow-cooked dishes. Together, these vessels paint a picture of a varied and relatively rich diet among the inhabitants of Falerii Novi during the imperial period.
A Shift in Late Antiquity
As the excavation records late antique layers, so the ceramic record reveals a striking change. The wide frying pans disappear almost entirely, replaced by deep casseroles better suited to boiling and slow cooking. This shift in vessel type points to a significant transformation in diet: away from the rich, meat-heavy meals of the earlier period, and towards stews, soups, and vegetable-based dishes in which meat, when present, was cooked slowly for a long time rather than quickly fried.
The reasons for this change are likely multiple: shifts in the availability of certain foodstuffs, broader economic and social transformations, and changing culinary traditions all played a role. Evidence from the macellum at Falerii Novi suggests that meat was still being sold in the fourth century CE, but by the fifth century the deep casserole had become the dominant cooking vessel, suggesting that the way meat was prepared and consumed had fundamentally changed.
The Materials behind the vessels
The ceramics themselves also reflect significant technological diversity. Cooking wares require iron-rich clays capable of withstanding direct exposure to fire and extreme heat, and different production traditions – local and imported – used different materials and firing techniques accordingly. The African imports, fired in oxidising kilns with good airflow, tend to be fine and well-finished with a characteristic red appearance. Local coarser wares, fired in low-oxygen environments, are thicker and darker, designed for durability on the hearth. Some vessels were used directly over an open flame; others required a stove or trivet between the fire and the pan.
For consumption, the site has yielded examples of terra sigillata – the fine red-slipped tableware produced in Italy – alongside African Red Slip ware, increasingly imported from Northern Africa as the imperial period progressed. These fine wares are particularly valuable to archaeologists not only as evidence of trade and consumption patterns, but as dating tools: their well-documented typologies help establish the chronology of the contexts in which they are found.
Completing the picture are locally produced ceramic drinking cups, a more modest counterpart to the glass vessels used by the elite, made in workshops known to have operated in the surrounding area, including one identified at Sutri.
