Transcript shedding light on late roman housing

SHEDDING LIGHT ON LATE
ROMAN HOUSING
• Lighting was an important element in the
design and use of late antique housing.
• Daylight was channeled through
windows and doorways, but important
social activity also took place at dawn and
after dark when artificial lighting was
required, and commonly used.
How light was used in the houses
dated to the period 4th-6th century CE?
• Lighting was used to create a ‘theatrical’
atmosphere during dinners.
• Lighting was also used to create areas of
light and shade complementing the decor
of the room.
• The distinction between male control of
the house at night and female control
during the day was also one between night
time with artificial lighting, and daylight.
DAYLIGHT
• Vitruvius states clearly (De Arch. 6.4.1, and
6.7.6–7) that good lighting was an
important element of house design.
• Lighting (and shade) had a role to play in
Roman housing that it does not have
today.
• “Blanket” lightening is a modern
conception.
Day and Night
• There is no reason for the activity of anyone
in the modern era to be restricted by nightfall,
whereas in the Roman world nightfall
could signal the impossibility of carrying
on with a wide range of daytime activities.
• Roman day was divided into 12 hours, which
formed equal divisions of daylight; no matter
how long daylight lasted. Roman hours could
thus vary from 45 to 75 modern minutes
• The time of day in the house had a significant
impact on its use and function.
• The aristocrat would receive his clients first
thing in the morning, but would then be away
on public duties from the second to about the
ninth hour, when he came home for dinner
with friends.
• During the absence of the pater familias, the
lady of the house would govern the
household.
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• “The space was male-dominated at the
salutatio and at the dinner at the ninth
hour. Therefore the beginning and end of
the day were male-dominated, whereas
the central portion of the day was femalecontrolled.”
• Artificial lighting was the main form of
illumination during male-led activities in
the house.
• Daylight and artificial light would
thus be a gendered distinction.
• The temporal distinction between the
husband and wife’s command of the
household was more important than the
spatial distinction since the atrium and
tablinum formed the locus for both male
receptions at dawn and dusk as well as female
reception of visitors during the day.
• The male head of the household was
more likely to take decisions regarding
the overall settings of artificial lighting,
as well as significant spaces like
reception rooms.
• By the end of the 1st c. A.D. the atrium
had gone out of use. Most houses in the
Roman provinces from the Imperial period
had one major reception room, which
was located across the peristyle from the
main entrance.
• Since there were three Roman hours
between the normal time for a Roman
dinner (the ninth hour) and sunset, given
the lavish nature of aristocratic dining, it is
not surprising that social activity in the
Roman house required artificial
lighting.
Artificial lights and their location
• The recorded location of lamps and other
traces of artificial light provide many
problems of interpretation.
• Artefacts may have moved a considerable
distance from their place of use and they
were even re-used in rooms not designed
for their original use.
• There is indeed no reason why rooms
within Roman houses should have been
used the way their designers and artists
intended.
• Nevertheless social pressure and social
acceptance can normally be expected to
ensure that a room that was designed as a
bedroom was used as such.
• On the other hand the relatively standard
design of aristocratic houses themselves
suggests a society in which design reflected
actual behaviour, in which people were less
likely to seek alternative designs or room
arrangements.
• Through much of the imperial period the
main forms of artificial lighting were
candles and terracotta lamps, which are
ubiquitous on excavations.
• Bronze lamps, more expensive but more durable,
also seem to have found their way into houses.
• Other modes of lighting such as brands or
torches made out of suitably combustible
material.
• The artificial light of choice—cheap, durable,
re-usable—in the majority of houses was the
lamp.
• Glass lamps, in the form of a simple cone, had
several advantages over pottery lamps.
• They were lighter, allowing them to be used in
large numbers in complex candelabra, or lamp
holders. Since they were glass, they created
more of a downward light than the ceramic
alternative.
Triclinium
• The most obvious place to look for artificial
lighting is in the Roman triclinium or dining
room, since this is the public room that was most
likely to be in use after dark.
• The late antique reception room normally opened
onto the peristyle opposite the main entrance to
the house.
• Conventionally, it had a triple doorway onto the
peristyle, allowing the diners a view out onto this
open area where one would and a garden or a
fountain.
(The use of free running water in the Mediterranean
context was also a sign of wealth.)
• It is unclear how often the dining room was lit
by exterior windows.
• Clerestory lighting, as commonly adopted in
the basilica, would seem to have been the
most likely solution, if indeed daylight was
required before night fell on the celebrations.
• Clerestory lighting would also have
created something of a spotlight effect.
• The lighting of the major reception room
could be changed by the use of wooden
screens and shutters, or valvae.
4th c. A.D. British villa at
Lullingstone
• It has a very compact ‘advanced’ design.
Advanced’ in an almost evolutionary
sense, as it reduced the villa to all the
main social spaces required in a house,
while leaving out less important rooms.
• Secondly, it was well-preserved. The
triclinium mosaic is very fine.
SHOPS
• The shop is the smallest type of ‘classical’
house that is clearly identifiable in
archaeology.
• Roman shops conventionally consisted of
one or two rooms. Where there were two
rooms, the second room, located behind
or above the commercial space, was a
living area.
• A large number of lower quality housing existed,
including wooden round huts and tent like
structures, but these are difficult to identify or
classify in terms of architecture.
• The shop on the other hand does have certain
characteristic features. The commercial space or
street front room, for example, usually included a
production area, storage, and a cash box.
• Counters might be located within the shop, in the
street front, or encroaching onto the adjacent
public space.
• Lamps were also needed within shops.
• One group of artefacts considered as
possible lights are the plain hexagonal or
octagonal bronze ‘censers’ that are
regularly discovered in late antique
houses.
• Also used to dispel smells like the
pomanders of herbs worn in the Medieval
West.
• In shops censers were had been suspended
as a light then it would have been positioned
in the perfect place to light the stairs, but it
was less convenient for the centre of the
room, which would consequently have been
in shadow.
• Vitruvius (De Arch. 6.6.7) notes that lighting
for stairs is important to avoid accidents and
collisions with people carrying loads.
CONCLUSIONS
• The range of artificial light in Late Antiquity was
somewhat larger than in the Early Empire.
• Bronze and glass lamps seem to have become
more common, and in some ways overtook
ceramic as a preferred material for lamps. Glass
in particular, as a translucent material, had the
advantage of downward lighting + ‘spotlight’
effects at the dinner table.
• The well-known late antique aristocratic
preference for apsidal dining rooms and
‘theatrical’ effects may also be associated with the
development of more ‘spot’ lighting.
• Studies of Roman lighting can indicate
distinction in the way the overall house
functioned in the daytime and in the dark.
• The lighting of the traditional Roman
house can be related to the social round
of its owners.
• The distinction between the times of
day during which a husband and wife
took charge of an aristocratic Roman
house is substantively one between
night and day respectively.