C. Höpken/F. Schäfer, Glasverarbeitung und Glaswerkstätten in Köln. In: G. Creemers/B. Demarsin/P. Cosyns (Hrsg.), Roman Glass in Germania Inferior. Interregional comparisons and recent results. Atuatuca 1, 2006, 74–85 (original) (raw)
The analysis of ancient glasses part II: Luxury Roman and early medieval glasses
JOM, 1996
In Part I (November 1995 JOM, pages 62-64), ancient glass as a material was described, including the raw materials used for its production and its resulting working properties. Some scientific techniques of analysis were outlined, as were the ways in which they were used in the investigation of ancient glass. The gross compositions, the trace impurities, the colorants, and the opacifiers can all he identified and quantified using a range of techniques; this can lead to clearly defined characteristics for glass made at specific times and in specific regiOns and places. The first example of glass production discussed was prehistoric Italian glass-the first true European glass produced. LUXURY ROMAN GLASS the opaque white glass contains a rela-neither the opaque nor translucent tively high level of lead oxide 4 and is glasses used to make them contained a opacified with calcium antimonate crys-high level of lead oxide. It is, therefore, tals. possible that the stock of opaque white A series of analyses of opaque white glass used for the manufacture of large glasses used in the manufacture of mo-luxury glass vessels such as the Portland saic pillar-molded ribbed bowls (some vase and the Kunsthistorische Museum of which probably date to the late 1st vessel, both probably made in the Medicentury B.C., and the rest date to the 1st terranean world, was manufactured in century A.D.) has revealed that the opaque the same tradition, irrespective of vessel white glass used contains significantly form. To the author's knowledge, none Although a limited amount of analyt-lowerlevels oflead oxideS and can easily of the common mosaic-ribbed bowls ical research has been carried out on be distinguished from the glass used in have been found to contain opaque white luxury Roman glass vessels, the small the Portland vase and the vessel in glass with high-lead oxide; this distincamount that has been done is instructive Vienna. This simple distinction appears tion shows that there was a difference in in that it shows interesting compositional to be related to the difference in the workshop practice reflected in an incharacteristics that must be explained. technology used. The Portland vase of creased volume of production. The
Things that travelled - A review of the Roman glass from Northern Adriatic Italy
Things that Travelled - Mediterranean Glass in the First Millennium AD, 2014
The volume aims to contribute to our understanding of glass production, distribution, trade and technologies and to contextualise this material within the social, economic and cultural framework of ancient societies. Chapters encompass various glass artefact groups (jewellery, vessels, secondary and primary production remains) from a plethora of regions such as Greece (Antonaras), Bulgaria (Cholakova and Rehren), Cyprus (Cosyns and Ceglia), the Libyan Sahara (Duckworth and Mattingly), Egypt (Rosenow and Rehren), Italy (Maltoni et al., Silvestri et al.), Jordan (O'Hea), Israel (Phelps), Britain (Sainsbury, Davis and Freestone), covering the Roman, Late Antique and early Islamic periods. Aspects discussed include the place of origin and production of raw glass, technology, patterns of distribution and trade, raw glass ingredients, the usage and spread of specific object groups such as gold-glass (Cesarin, Walker et al.), gems (Antonaras) or objects made of emerald green glass (Cottam and Jackson), as well as the relationship between objects made of glass and other materials. Analytical chapters focus on the chemical definition, introduction and distribution of various raw glass groups such as HIMT glass (Freestone et al.), aspects such as glass recycling (Sainsbury), the supply and trade of natron and plant ash glass in Upper Egypt (Rosenow and Rehren), and the characterisation of new plant ash glass groups in early Islamic Palestine (Phelps). We would like to thank all authors of the chapters included here as well as the other contributors to the conference for presenting their research. Further thanks are due to the British Museum, the Wallace Collection, and UCL's Institute of Archaeology for providing conference space; to UCL and the Association for the History of Glass for providing funding (grants for travel and accommodation for participants, print permissions for images); and to UCL Press. Finally, we would like to thank all those students of UCL who helped in the organisation of the conference, in particular
The Impact of Glassblowing on the Early-Roman Glass Industry (circa 50 B.C. – A.D. 79)
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ancient glass was frequently treated as though it was a prestigious product, owned only by the elites of society. Research was primarily art-historical, and focused on select museum pieces. As archaeology developed, it became clear that glass vessels were used at many, if not most, Roman sites, from the late first century B.C. onward, and in many different social contexts, contradicting the idea that only the rich could afford them. Scholars began to explain the increased prevalence of glass by arguing that the invention of glassblowing (circa 50 B.C.) had increased production speed while lowering production costs, making glass vessels cheap and widely available across the social spectrum This thesis explores the role of blown glass by comparing the percentages and forms produced by older casting techniques in glass vessel assemblages from military sites, civilian sites, frontier settlements, and settings at the heart of the Roman world. It seeks to understand the social and economic status of blown glass and cast glass: why did cast glass persist after the invention of cheaper blown glass? Was cast and blown glass equally accessible to different levels of society? And to what extent can the invention of glassblowing bear responsibility for the rise in glass vessel use in the Roman world? By drawing comparisons between vessels from different production methods, and from different social and geographical contexts, this thesis begins to identify emerging patterns in glass use across Roman society and finds that both cast and blown vessels were used across all levels of society and that there was no strict divide between the use of casting for luxury wares and glassblowing for cheap utilitarian wares.
The Late Antique Glass from Mayen (Germany): First Results of Chemical and Archaeological Studies
In: Bettina Zorn / Alexandra Hilgner (ed.), Glass along the Silk Road from 200 BC to AD 1000. RGZM - Tagungen 9 (Mainz 2010) 15-28.
"Late Antique glass vessels originating from the cemetery of Mayen are currently being studied by the RGZM. According to the distribution of vessels, which are decorated with diagonal ribs, a production in the Mayen region seems likely, while few different decorated vessels were imported from distant production centres. The glass workshops in northern Gaul and the Rhineland were located in the largest agglomerations in the early Roman Empire, while many Late Antique workshops produced glass wares in minor settlements. Chemical μ-XRF (micro X-ray Fluorescence) analyses show that the Mayen glasses have two different compositions: Typical Roman soda-lime-silica-glass and HIMT-glass. The data are compared with glass from the contemporary find spots in Hambach and Krefeld-Gellep. In Mayen HIMT-glass occurred only in the 4th and 5th century, while typical Roman composition is also found with earlier objects. Political or economic factors may account for the change in composition and the change in the distribution of glass workshops in Late Antiquity."
The paper reports on the composition of thirty-eight Late Roman glass fragments (3 rd-4 th century CE) from Viminacium, the capital of Moesia Province, and Egeta, the fort controlling Iron Gates Gorge on the Roman Danube Limes. The glasses are measured using simultaneous particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and particle-induced gamma-ray emission (PIGE). The analysis shows that sixteen glasses belong to the Roman glass decolourized by antimony, nine to the Roman glass decolourized by manganese, and one is recycled using these two types. Five glasses belong to the Foy série 3.2, two to HIMT, one to Jalame type with manganese and one to the rare plant-ash type P-1, produced in Egypt, and for the first time reported from the continental Europe. The comparison of the finds with the contemporary glass from Serbia and from the wider Balkans shows a marked shift in glass trading patterns between the epochs of the High Empire and the Late Antiquity. During the High Empire, glass seems to be imported to the central and eastern Balkans mainly from the west via Roman road Aquileia-Emona-Siscia-Sirmium-Viminacium and perhaps via Adriatic ports, while in the Late Antiquity it was predominantly from east to west, over the Danube, Via Militaris or Aegean ports. Another find is that the richness of the glass market in Viminacium indicates that the capital of Moesia province on the Danube limes was a cosmopolitan city.
2019
This thesis focuses on Roman glass vessels from the mid-1st century A.D to the late 1 and very early 2nd century A.D., specifically c.A.D.40-110. These years have long been identified as representing a significant episode in the story of ancient glass and witness a particularly remarkable period of change in glass vessel production across the Roman world. The purpose of this thesis is to further our understanding of what these changes are, when they occurred and the causes behind them. The first chapter presents the background to the research and demonstrates how the thesis relates to previous work in this field. The following three chapters focus on identifying those aspects of glass vessels that changed during this period and establishing a firmer chronological framework for these developments than has previously been possible. This is achieved by the analysis of carefully selected, closely dated glass assemblages from Britain, France, the lower Rhineland and Italy. The rationale ...
REPRINTED FROM JOURNAL OF GLASS STUDIES Glass of the Gallo-Roman Period from Northeastern France
This article is devoted to the glass finds of the Gallo Roman era in the Mandubian (Alesia), Lingon (Langres and Mirebeau), and Sequanian (Mandeure Mathay) territories, situated in Burgundy and Franche-Comté. In antiquity, this area constituted one of the main crossroads of northeastern Gaul, which is corroborated by the glass finds. They include numerous imports from the Rhone basin, western Switzerland, the Rhine region, and even Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. However, the repertoire of shapes and of certain details representative of particular glassmakers indicates that the demand for glass vessels must have been met primarily by regional workshops.