New evidence for the organization of the Roman lamp industry. The lamps of Gerulata (Bratislava-Rusovce)
Abstract
The auxiliary fort at Gerulata (present-day Bratislava-Rusovce, Slovakia) stood guarding a ford in the Danube from the Flavian period until the 4th century AD. The 210 oil lamps archaeologically recovered from civilian, military and funerary contexts here are a broad assembly of wares spanning c.
AD 75-250. The majority are Firmalampen of Loeschcke types IX, X and their variations - a koiné type of lighting device in the Northern provinces.
Their bases were often stamped with the marks of a variety of firms (much like brand names are used today), some of which persisted for over three centuries while the basic lamp shape remained virtually unchanged. The paper presents a novel study of the firm and workshop marks from the lamps of Gerulata as new evidence for the heterogeneous organization of the lamp industry.
Parent firms in Northern Italy mass-produced lamps which were traded even over great distances, using workshop marks to differentiate matrices. In the absence of copyright, independent craftsmen used finished lamps to make unauthorized matrices and produce their own wares.
But firms also relied on a wide network of subcontracted or branch workshops to produce lamps on demand and on location, using symbols to differentiate these manufacturers. The paper examines the connection between firm and workshop marks at Gerulata, as well as original producers' marks of clandestine manufacturers, to illustrate the operations of lamp workshops on the Limes.
Together with personal marks they document one community's involvement in the manufacture of ceramics and the making of light.