ARCHAEOLOGY • POMPEII • DAILY LIFE
Inside a Pompeii Cupboard: Coins, Cosmetics and Childhood Charms
An excavated household cupboard brings daily routines and personal possessions into focus nearly 2,000 years after Vesuvius erupted.
ADDED NOVEMBER 4, 2026 • FINDINGS REPORTED OCTOBER 29, 2026
A household preserved in fragments
On October 29, 2026, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii published findings from a cupboard in a house on Via dell’Abbondanza, in Regio IX, insula 11. The building is traditionally attributed to Cornelius Maximus. The cupboard’s form can be reconstructed from excavation evidence; it is not an intact wooden cabinet simply opened after two millennia.
What it contained
The park describes tweezers, a tool for preparing pigments, a glass perfume vessel, an incense burner and a bronze lamp. Cooking and serving vessels accompanied lead weights kept in a small wooden box. The weights could indicate commercial activity, although their precise use remains uncertain.
Reuters reports 38 bronze coins in a small woven container, alongside a necklace assemblage containing at least 24 miniature objects. These ordinary possessions survived in the city buried by Vesuvius in AD 79.
Charms from childhood
The pierced pendants include bone, faience, glass paste and rock crystal. Their forms include Bes and Mercury, hands, feet and plant motifs. Archaeologists identify them as crepundia, a category associated with rattling ornaments.
Reuters describes such pieces as childhood amulets. That interpretation adds a personal dimension, but it does not identify a particular child or establish who owned the objects when the eruption occurred.
Objects reveal activities more securely than identities. Cosmetics do not prove a single woman owned everything in the cupboard. Weights suggest a possible use, rather than proving a specific occupation. A house’s traditional name also does not establish the identity of every resident.
Why small finds matter
A palace or monument can tell us how people displayed power. A household collection raises different questions: how did residents prepare for the day, store money, organize work or keep meaningful belongings?
The strongest interpretations connect an object’s material and wear with its position and surrounding finds. The emotional story is compelling, but uncertainty is part of the history too. These fragments bring us closer to daily life without supplying a complete biography.
Sources
- Archaeological Park of Pompeii: excavation of a house in insula IX 11 and an armarium with crepundia — official research summary, October 29, 2026 (Italian), with a link to the full excavation report.
- Reuters: Pompeii cupboard opens window onto life before Vesuvius erupted — contemporary reporting on the coins and amulets.