ABSTRACT
Lamps had one very obvious purpose in tombs: they were needed to provide light. These were clay lamps, usually between a half an inch and several inches in diameter, consisting of a flattened reservoir for fuel, an outlet for the wick, and sometimes a handle. In the case of Beth She'arim, there was one especially curious decoration on a lamp, one that does not fit at all with the others found at the spot, or indeed with most of the other materials of various kinds found there. Materialism and its focus on embodied experience, along with the notion of intersectionality, can help us think about objects like Probos' seal and the lamp from Beth-She'arim. The stamp may have been for imprinting bread, as Goodenough supposes, or it may have been a more generic stamp seal for imprinting wax. The consumer theory begins with the assumption that people buy things because they are useful and they fit with their needs.
