The activities that filled the everyday lives of average people are often overlooked by the historical record. Objects such as Roman oil lamps have the potential to inform not only on the mundane or minutiae of everyday life but collectively can be extremely valuable in identifying the norms, values, and emic perspectives of groups largely omitted from primary records. The ubiquity of objects like oil lamps in the archaeological record make them ideal for statistical and dynamic analyses, which hold significant potential for identifying outlier behavior and by extension, expressions of agency and identity. The Agency in Legacy Collections project aims to document the mundane in order to create a fuller picture of everyday life and lived experiences in the past.

Five objects were documented, photographed, and photo modeled from the Evansville Museum of Art, History & Science: a Jerash type oil lamp, a Samaritan type oil lamp, a double-nozzled Roman oil lamp from Meidum, Egypt, an Ottoman clay smoking pipe bowl, and a ceramic sherd.

Co-P.I. with Dr. Meg Hagseth