De la lampe à la lumière en Crète minoenne (3200-1100 av. J.-C.)

Minoan lamps remain the only artificial light sources that have not yet been studied as lighting devices but rather as chronological and regional markers. This research proposes a functional analysis of these objects, entailing from the wick to the light, and investigates, through this prism, the rhythm of activities and the Minoans’ lived space. To this end, an interdisciplinary approach was developed. A typo-techno-functional analysis has been applied to 543 lamps and objects that could have a link with lighting. This corpus comes from seven settlements in a chronological sequence covering the whole Bronze Age, thus permitting a diachronic analysis of lighting techniques within the sites. The function of lamps has been studied through an experimental approach. Based on the reconstruction of shapes, fuels and wicks available in the Minoans’ environment, it has shed light on technical aspects of their utilization (transport, burning length, smokes, smells, light). In this frame, a reference database of soot deposits has been designed. These deposits’ shape and texture vary according to the fuels used. Experimental photometric recordings have, besides, showcased that light ambiances differ according to the fuels. Consequently, the reference database not only helped identifying the fuels of minoan lamps (vegetal oils, animal fats, beeswax) but also their flames’ colour and intensity, based on which some first threedimensions models have been built. A spatial analysis of lamps in their archaeological context, eventually, contributed to define the role of light on the rhythm and the localization of activities from the daily life, sometimes thanks to ethnographic analogies. This is the picture of a preindustrial society that one shall keep in mind: work starts at dawn and ends at dusk. Its rhythm and intensity vary according to seasons, weather and altitude. Lamps lighted, from the evening onwards, and sometimes during daytime, collective and individual activities, inside and outside. However, their flames didn’t permit to see beyond one meter far, suggesting that moving in the dark was common.