The History and Archaeoly Museum from Ploieşti hosts an important collection of lamps, remarkable for its typological and chronological diversity. Unfortunately, just a small part of almost 150 lamps benefits from information regarding...
moreThe History and Archaeoly Museum from Ploieşti hosts an important collection of lamps, remarkable for its typological and chronological diversity.
Unfortunately, just a small part of almost 150 lamps benefits from information regarding the discovery terms and places, most of them been acquired from private individuals in a time when the Museum of Ploieşti had organised its permanent exhibitions.
A unitary group of twenty lamps belonging to the Firmalampen type detaches from the others. The popularity of their shape in the whole Roman world over more than three centuries, the quality and prestige of north-Italic signatures has determined their copy or imitation in the local and provincial workshops.
In the absence of any data regarding their provenance, the only possibility of a stylistic, iconographical and chronological interpretation of this group of lamps from the Museum of Ploieşti’s collection remains the comparative studying method on the basis of analogies.
Starting from the premise that, in most cases, the lamps were discovered by or acquired from their first owners on the territory of Romania, we have paid a greater attention to the Romanian specialty literature, which was statistically completed and reassessed with new artefacts.
The name of the workshop’s owner is still preserved on sixteen lamps, while the other four have no such mention. Most of them, nineteen pieces, belong to type X (Loeschcke and Buchi), variant a and b, and only one to the type IXa. From the ten different types of marks present on the lamps under discussion, eight are of north-Italic origin: CAMPILI (1 lamp, cat. no. 2), CASSI (2 lamps, cat. no. 3 and 4), FORTIS (4 lamps, cat. no. 6-9), IANUARI (2 lamps, cat. no. 10 and 11), LVCIVS (1 lamp, cat. no. 12), NERI (1 lamp, cat. no. 13), OCTAVI (2 lamps, cat. no. 14 and 15) and PROCLI (1 lamp, cat. no. 16).
We underline that FORTIS, the most common mark printed on the Firmalampen type, is present on four lamps previously mentioned, thus confirming its popularity inside the Empire.
Beside the marks already presented there are also products of the local workshops from Dacia and Moesia Inferior: ARMENI (1 lamp, cat. no. 1) and FLAVI (1 lamp, cat. no. 5). There is also the possibility of including the signature IANUARI in this category because its writing is quite different from the Italic prototype that we may regard it as a local product.
Among the lamps without signature, we draw attention to the one characterised by sensible large dimensions (cat. no. 18), the lamp with three rostra (cat. no. 19) and the only lamp belonging to type Loeschcke IX (cat. no. 20) which seems to be a provincial import, possibly from the German aria.
The lamps from Apulum and Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa (the two were placed in Dacia) and Durostorum (Moesia Inferior) may be remarked among the local workshops that used to produce imitations of Italic prototypes or marks with a restrained circulation.
The general chronological range is between the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. and the middle of the 3rd century A.D. Only four lamps could surely be dated by the archaeological context of discoveries between 101/102-117/118 A.D., the time the Roman camp from Drajna de Sus, Prahova County was in existence.
