ABSTRACT
Levantine lamps, which stand outside the stylistic conventions of the Imperial mainstream, can be used to reveal a significant expression of cultural resistance to social change at the borders of the Empire. Modern scholarship often looks to more sophisticated expressions of cultural mores than low-value objects of daily life such as ceramic lamps – the “high” and “low” dialogue explored throughout the Shifting Frontiers conference. Yet the deliberate choice of a contrasting, tangible aesthetic by the indigenous inhabitants of the southern Levant demonstrates how that population signalled their recognition of, and relationship to, shifts in social culture in Late Antiquity.
