Material Methods and Early Rabbinic Archaeology: Affordances and Small Finds in Roman Palestine

• In Event: The Body and Its Material Environment in Ancient Judaism

Abstract

This paper seeks to show how recent lines of scholarship in Roman archaeology can contribute to our understanding of early rabbinic literature, and early Judaism more broadly. In particular, I engage with recent work on “object-focused histories” among Roman archaeologists, and apply their methods to early rabbinic sources and finds from Roman Palestine. This case study focuses on the “Northern Collar-Neck Lamp” (i.e., the “Boot Lamp” or “Ginnosar Lamp”), which was manufactured and used in Roman Galilee during the first two centuries CE. I argue that this lamp’s high collar, perhaps designed to reduce spillage or in imitation of lamps produced elsewhere in the Mediterranean (e.g., Ephesus), also served as an affordance that enabled and invited certain forms of consumption or usage by the user. In particular, the high collar surrounding the filling hole inclined the user to place an additional oil reservoir on top, such as a pierced eggshell. Filling an eggshell with oil and letting it drip would have prolonged burn time without human intervention. This usage of the lamp, which may not be self-evident from the archaeological finds alone, is suggested through critical engagement with Tannaitic texts, which discuss hundreds of objects, including their physical details and uses. These texts have heretofore been mostly overlooked in recent materially-focused scholarship on the Roman era. In doing so, I demonstrate how integrating these two areas of research can benefit both the study of Roman history-archaeology and early Judaism.

Author

• Gregg Gardner, University of British Columbia