Abstract EN:

The use of oil lamps as means of lighting, illustrates perfectly the phenomenon of Romanization that took place in Gaul from the conquest by Julius Caesar in 52 BC.The colony of Lugdunum is no exception to the rule. Therefore, numerous lamps already result from layers dating back to the foundation of Lyon and find themselves in archaeological contexts at least until the beginning of the 4th century AD.Among the dozen of sites which give evidence of a craft activity linked to the work of clay in Lyon, three produced oil lamps such as the workshop of La Muette, during the Augustan period, the workshop of La Butte, between 40 AD until the end of the 1st century AD, and the workshop of Chapeau Rouge, during the second half of the 1st century AD.Thus, the study of oil lamps hand-crafted in these sites, firstly allowed to determine a panorama of forms and decorations produced locally.The purpose of any production being to be spread and then consumed – and possibly discarded – this work has also endeavoured to study lamps coming from domestic sites, mainly gathered on the hill of Fourvière and on Lyon peninsula, and funerary sites, mostly located in the suburbium of Lugdunum. The compilation of the data collected from each of these contexts has helped to identify a lychnological facies of Lyon over approximately four centuries, based on typological and morphological researches, but also on ceramic, iconographic and epigraphic data.