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What can a Pompeii bakery tell us about a working day?

The bakery known as Popidio Prisco’s still offers clues to a working day: stone mills, an oven, and space in which food moved through successive stages. One absent feature is revealing too. The official excavation guide notes the missing sales counter and suggests alternatives to selling bread directly there, while keeping those alternatives tentative.

3–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • Which parts of a proposed workflow come from surviving objects, and which are reconstruction?

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History

Reading a buried timeline

A deep object is not necessarily the oldest thing at an archaeological site. A later pit can cut through earlier ground, leaving a sequence that has to be reconstructed from relationships between layers.

12–15 min
History

When Britain’s railways needed a shared clock

A timetable becomes awkward when the clocks at its two ends disagree. In nineteenth-century Britain, railway journeys helped turn local time into a shared coordination problem, while the telegraph helped distribute an answer.

8–10 min
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