Investigations into the Dyeing Industry in Pompeii: Experimental Archaeology and Computer Simulation Techniques

Heather Hopkins Pepper re-examines the scale of Pompeii’s dyeing industry through an unusual combination of archaeology and engineering. Rather than estimating production solely from surviving installations, she constructs and modifies an experimental replica, reassesses dyeing apparatus in situ and uses ergonomics, thermodynamics, manufacturing theory and computer simulation to test how the equipment could actually have operated.

The approach connects technical questions with the wider economy of Pompeii: production capacity matters because it affects how we understand manufacturing within the city and its relationship to the Roman economy. A full gazetteer of dyeing apparatus supports the analysis.