Graded illumination as institutional practice: multi-nozzled lamps in public contexts across the Roman Mediterranean

This article examines multi-nozzled lamps recovered exclusively from public contexts across the Roman Mediterranean to investigate illumination as an institutional practice. Moving beyond typological description, it analyzes how variations in nozzle count and spatial deployment produce graded regimes of visibility within civic architecture. Drawing on a systematically assembled comparative dataset, the study identifies structured regional patterns in the distribution of enhanced lighting across agoras, bathhouses, palatial complexes, streets, and administrative buildings. The findings demonstrate that intensified illumination was neither randomly dispersed nor merely functional. Rather, lighting capacity was selectively embedded within architectural systems to organize attention, regulate movement, and reinforce hierarchies of presence. By integrating theories of space, visibility, infrastructure, and sensory experience, the article proposes that multi-nozzled lamps function as micro-infrastructural devices mediating institutional authority. Illumination is thus interpreted as a form of graded social materiality through which public consciousness and civic order were materially produced across the Roman Mediterranean.