Place of Origin – Europe: Roman Cologne (Germania Inferior)
Date – Late 2nd-early 3rd centuries CE; deposited in
c. 1617-1624 James Fort contexts
Location – Collections
Sherds of this artifact were recovered from the Blacksmith Shop/Bakery (Structure 183), Pit 6, and Pit 16. The fragments were mended together to reveal a one of a kind find: a Roman oil lamp belonging to a type known as a Firmalampe (or “factory lamp”). It is the oldest artifact of European origin in the Jamestown collection. Romans made this style of lamp in a two-piece mold starting in the 1st century C.E in workshops in Modena, Italy. Its popularity spread to the Northern provinces of the Roman empire where later versions were manufactured. The Jamestown lamp is one of these later examples. Closely similar to factory lamps made in the Roman pottery production center of Cologne (Germany), the Jamestown lighting vessel most probably originated from this Rhineland trade hub, too, and was exported westward along the Roman highway through Northern Gaul to Roman Britain. The lamp is made of a whitish clay and covered on the exterior with a dark grayish brown slip. It originally had a handle but that fragment has not yet been recovered.
The thick walls of the vessel indicate that the lamp arrived intact with a Jamestown settler. Its miniature size, and the lack of charring around the nozzle head and on the interior signifying that it was never used, suggest that the lamp’s original function may have been as an apotropaic object placed in a Roman person’s grave to light the way to the afterlife. Roman oil lamps were popular items in gentlemen’s cabinets of curiosity in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It may have come to Jamestown with an antiquarian or as a family heirloom.
Attributes
Fabric: The fabric is a whitish, very pale brown and finely levigated clay.
Glaze: Unglazed, but washed with a thin dark grayish brown-colored slip on the exterior.
Decoration: Undecorated.
Form: This oil lamp is the only form in the Jamestown collection.
related videos
sources
Bailey, Donald M. Catalogue of the Lamps in the British Museum III: Roman Provincial Lamps. British Museum Publications, London (1988).
Dietz, Karlheinz, Udo Osterhaus, Sabine Rieckhoff-Pauli, Konrad Spindler Regensburg zur Römerzeit. Verlag Freidrich Pustet, Regensburg (1979).
Lapp, Eric C. “A Curious Artifact: The Changing Meaning of the Roman Oil Lamp from 17th-Century Jamestown, Virginia.” In American Journal of Archaeology 126.3 (2022): 411-423.
Lapp, Eric C. “Encountering Photoamulets and the Use of Apotropaic Light in Late Antiquity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology. C. Papadopoulos and H. Moyes, eds. Oxford. Oxford University Press (2022): 415-438.
Lapp, Eric and Nicoli, Joe. “Exploring 3D Modeling, Fingerprint Extraction, and Other Scanning Applications for Ancient Clay Oil Lamps.” Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 1.2 (2014): 34-44.
Straube, Beverly. “A Roman Oil Lamp Illuminates Seventeenth-Century Jamestown.” In Ceramics in America, Robert Hunter, editor. University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, Hanover, NH (2008): 278-284.
