wow interesting. got anything I could read more on garum factories in Pompeii?
Comment on Archaeologists find a human brain that was turned to glass by Pompeii volcano Vesuvius
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 week ago
I wonder how many glazed parasites they’ll find in it. Specially fish parasites - mostly from garum, and guess where garum factories were? Near Pompeii.
Doom@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 week ago
History and Archaeology Online has some great introductory info.
Odds are that you won’t find leftovers of those factories / workshops in the ruins of either Herculaneum or Pompeii though. Garum wasn’t prepared in urban centres, as there were laws against it. (Garum production stinks really, really bad.) Instead it was prepared nearby, in areas with low demographic density, and then sent to the city for distribution.
And the region around Pompeii was great for that - it’s coastal so you have access to fish, it’s really sunny and garum fermentation is made under sunlight, and it’s close enough to Rome to make travel times short.
The text I’ve linked mentions it, but 30% of the garum production of Pompeii and the surrounding region (Campania) was owned by a single guy, called Aulus Umbricius Scarus. He lived in Pompeii, got killed by the Vesuvius eruption, and his house has been identified.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
how would the parasites survive the garum making process? like that shit is saturated with salt and left in a jar for months!
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 week ago
The spread of fish tapeworm due to Roman conquest is well documented, and the only good explanation is garum. And I believe that larval cysts can survive pretty rough conditions, including high salinity.
The “right” way to get rid of them would be by heat, but you can’t simply use cooked fish to make garum, it denatures the proteins required for the fish flesh to decompose “the right way”.