Lucerne a becco rotondo da Gnatia nel contesto della Puglia centro-settentrionale. Dati archeologici e prospettive di indagini archeometriche

The documentation collected on the clay lamps from the Roman period in Apulia allows drawing a preliminary picture of both the local production and the diffusion and circulation of these materials between the first century BC and the beginning of the fourth century AD. However, the work is conditional on the status of the studies and the archaeological research that not always permits to define univocal and equally valid conclusions for the vast territory considered. In fact, currently there is a lack of comprehensive works on the most confirmed productions from the Imperial age in the Southern Italy – and Apulia in particular -. Rather, this work has already been started in relation to the oldest productions from the Hellenistic age, which is from the Late Roman period, and they also refer to a vast circulation of models and prototypes variously re-elaborated. When facing the methodology in regard of these problems, there is the difficulty of referring to only a small number of certain contests, in terms of stratigraphic data and significant quantities to consider, that therefore forces us to exclude from the analysis a vast geographical and temporal production. This is a problem that includes also the Apulian contests, where the heterogeneity of the available information does not allow a clear definition of the commercialization and therefore diffusion of this class of objects yet, but also permits - also on the basis of the use of diagnostic archaeometrics applied to these lychnological focused contests - to establish the tendencies and orientations which are useful to the definition of a socio-economic picture of the territory.