Pompeii has long occupied a privileged place in modern imaginings of the Roman past. Beyond the city’s well-known monuments, however, lies a well of data that has barely begun to be tapped. This talk will introduce the research program of Tulane University’s Pompeii I.14 Project, an interdisciplinary excavation focusing on one large building complex on the southeastern edge of the city. Now in its fourth year, the project has begun to reveal the lives of the non-elite individuals—both free and enslaved—who lived and worked in the building. Among other findings, the results thus far indicate the agency of these people, who exploited the economic potential of the space by adopting a variety of profit-generating activities, which might have shifted with the seasons. The activity that likely occupied the winter season—the manufacture of reed mats and baskets—warrants particular interest. Our recovery of a large and complex reed-working workshop undermines Roman literary characterization of this industry as economically marginal, while the unique find of two rooms completely filled with piles of mineralized reeds complicates the traditional August date for the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius recorded by Pliny the Younger, as well as the fall dates that have been proposed based on archaeological data. Rather than advocating for (yet another!) eruption date, our team is now exploring how the incorporation of seasonal perspectives can bring new insights into life in Pompeii, both at the moment of the eruption and in the centuries preceding it.