Let there be . . . lights. . .
Oil lamps were part of the daily life of ancients. One lamp could give light to a whole room. Even more, could two.
While exposing the remains of the plaster floor on DQ41, David Kluth uncovered two oils lamps together in a crevice just to the right of the north doorway to the room.
When cleaned and identified, these lamps may be helpful in dating the space we are excavating. David is rightly pleased with his find; so are we…
August 10, 2015 @ 1:05 pm
Dear Mark Schuler,
the lamps you found are so-called “North Jordan” lamps type, dated (mainly on stylistic criteria, to be precise) to the late 5th and the 6th centuries AD. Their manufacturing centre might have been Beit Ras (Capitolias of the Decapolis) where hundreds of them were found. Even in our own dig at Beit Ras last May we found several of thgem.
Here is the literature: K. da Costa, Economic Cycles in the Byzantine Levant: the Evidence from Lamps at Pella in Jordan. Levant 42 (2010): 70-87.