Kitchens

The city of Olynthus is located on the Chalcidician peninsula in northern Greece and furnishes one with some of the best and earliest examples of identifiable Greek kitchens. The hearth as seat of the household is a long-standing tradition. It is ever present in Greek, and later, mythology and epic. Symbolic realm of Hestia it would seem de rigueur, yet the majority of Greek houses that have been excavated at Olynthus and elsewhere lacked one. Although references to kitchens and cooking areas occur far more frequently in Latin literature than in the Greek sources, they still do little to shed light on the physical attributes of such spaces. Just as the Greek kitchen may be attended by a small bathroom, so too the Roman kitchens might have a latrine located nearby.