D. Ridgway, F. R. Serra Ridgway, M. Pearce, E. Herring, R. D. Whitehouse, and J. B. Wilkins, Ancient Italy in its Mediterranean Setting. Studies in Honour of Ellen Macnamara (Accordia Specialist Studies on the Mediterranean 4). London: Accordia Research Institute, 2000. Pp. x + 336, illus. ISBN 1-8734-1521-4. £46.20.

Abstract

(scale 2:3), drawings of top and sometimes bottom, and profile drawings of each lamp; some readers might have found Munsell or DIN color descriptions useful too. The publisher might also have provided some more careful editing of the English; infelicities abound. As one might expect there seem to be strong trading connections with Asia Minor and with the western Black Sea coast (one major omission from the extensive bibliography is K.D. Vitelli's publication of the early seventh-century lamps from the Yassi Ada wreck in G.F. Bass and F.H. van Doorninck, Jr., Yassi Ada, [College Station, Tex. 1982]). There are some interesting iconographic scenes on lamp disks: for example, a later first-century B.C.E volute lamp has an erotic symplegma set above a galley, an unusual scene that suggests Antony and Cleopatra's famous meeting at Tarsus. There are some unusual local lamps like no. 74 (open top and flat bottom-could it in fact be a lampholder?) or nos. 75-81, starburst lamps with unusual Greek relief inscriptions-XPY on top and COY on bottom-that are widely distributed in North Pontic regions. Nos. 93-105 are imported or local versions of early Christian North African lamps but mixed up together rather than divided into earlier and later (Hayes I and II). Related are nos. 106 and 107; their solid handles with single groove seem to place them in the late fourth century rather than the fifth-sixth-century date suggested. Wheelmade lamps with small handles like nos. 87 and 88 are also found in second-third-century C.E. contexts in Asia Minor; no reason is given for the fourth-century date suggested. The final group of cross-handled lamps find close parallels among some of the Yassi Ada lamps referred to above, which date from ca. 630 C.E. and which probably come from workshops on the west coast of the Black Sea. The book should serve to whet our appetites for the publication of more recent excavations at this remarkable outpost of Hellenism.