"Artificial lights" were a thing as far as pre-recorded history (and for rural illiterate peasant activities, much of middle ages is essentially pre-recorded history relying on oral tradition, artifacts and e.g. 18th century documentation of old-at-the-time practices instead of contemporary writing) - especially in northern areas where during winter months you get sunlight for a quite limited time, if you look at the medieval and earlier research of "evening work" i.e. various activities that can be done under candle light or the meager light from "wood-stick" (I don't know the proper English term, essentially very narrow pieces chopped off of firewood, placed in special holders to provide evening light for the many people for whom candles were too expensive). We have descriptions of "pre-light" rural work, of preparation activities for e.g. breadmaking that were done in the morning before the day enabled to do the proper work, and which had to be done earlier in order to not waste the scarce daylight hours on it. .

Artificial light is an important piece of social technology, and improvements to it had a big impact, but people have needed and used artificial light to sustain their non-daylight activities since pretty much forever; stone age communities did their social activities next to a fireplace in the dark. Like, today is going to be 9 hours of daylight for me, and for December-January there's going to be just 7 hours or so of daylight; people are not going to lie down for 17 hours, they do try to do the same things just with less light.