Excavations at Mălăiești Roman Fort and bath (Romania, Prahova County) undertaken in 1930, 1954, 1985, and 2011-2019 revealed a small roman fortification and its baths, between 101-118 AD. This paper ...will attempt to show the significance of the glassware finds through a social-cultural analysis resulting from the way the finds were distributed within the site. Our study describes the glassware fragments found during recent excavations and offers an analysis in the context of the manufacturing processes, spatial distribution, and the circumstances of their discovery as well as the chemical analysis of the typical samples. As an end result, we were able to determine their chronological, morphological, and typological properties.
•The analysis of imported Roman glass sheds new light on the context of glass exchange.•The first archeometric study of Roman glass counters form the territory of Poland.•Glass composition was ...determined by LA-ICP-MS.•Chronological distinction is visible in the base glass used to make white glass.
From the 1st century onwards, the flow of the imported glass objects into the territory of Barbaricum rises. A selection of 47 glass counters from archaeological sites in Poland dated to Roman Iron Age were gathered and analysed by LA-ICP-MS. The paper provides the data on the composition of different glass colours. These glasses were of the soda-lime-silica type, and were mostly made using Roman natron glass. Colourants and opacifiers were added to the glass – for most counter colours this was Sb-Mn recycled glass. For the white glass counters however, there is a chronological distinction in the type of base glass used. The first group, dated to phase B1-B2 (ca. the second half of the 1st century–160 CE), used Mn-decolourised glass, while the second group, dated from phase B2/C1-C1a (160/180–230 CE) and later, was probably produced with Sb-decolourised glass. One of the conclusions proposes further research into imported white glass found at Polish archaeological sites.
Roman head-shaped glass vessels from Hungary Dévai, Kata
Dissertationes archaeologicae ex Instituto Archaeologico Universitatis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae.,
03/2024, Volume:
3, Issue:
11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The paper presents two head-shaped vessels from Hungary: a glass bottle from a late Roman cemetery at Intercisa and a janiform bottle from a grave in Csongrád, i.e., the Sarmatian Barbaricum. Thanks ...to large-scale immigration from the East, the fort and vicus of Intercisa had a significant eastern influence. The most famous unit garrisoned there was the Syrian Cohors I millaria Hemesenorum sagittariorum equitatia civium Romanorum, originally stationed in the Syrian town of Hemesa, where many civilians may have accompanied the troops and moved to Intercisa. Settled down there, the new residents imported several objects from the East, including the two head-shaped vessels presented here.
Photonic crystals built by time in ancient Roman glass Guidetti, Giulia; Zanini, Roberta; Franceschin, Giulia ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
09/2023, Volume:
120, Issue:
39
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Ancient glass objects typically show distinctive effects of deterioration as a result of environmentally induced physicochemical transformations of their surface over time. Iridescence is one of the ...distinctive signatures of aging that is most commonly found on excavated glass. In this work, we present an ancient glass fragment that exhibits structural color through surface weathering resulting in iridescent patinas caused by silica reprecipitation in nanoscale lamellae. This archaeological artifact reveals an unusual hierarchically assembled photonic crystal with extremely ordered nanoscale domains, high spectral selectivity, and reflectivity (~90%), that collectively behaves like a gold mirror. Optical characterization paired with nanoscale elemental analysis further underscores the high quality of this structure providing a window into this sophisticated natural photonic crystal assembled by time.
Excavations in the Roman villa of Aiano yielded twenty glass beads, a pendant, and a glass-recycling furnace, originally interpreted as a bead workshop. This article re-assesses the evidence of bead ...making in light of new data obtained thanks to recent progress in archaeological glass studies. A detailed study of the typology, technology, and chemical composition of the beads clearly excludes local production. Instead, two different forming techniques, four different base glasses (Roman, HIMT, Foy 2.1 and Foy 2.1/HIMT), and numerous colouring and opacifying materials point to a well-established and extensive network of the Roman bead trade, in which Aiano evidently participated. The majority of the beads can be related to the monumentalization of the villa in the fourth to fifth century ad and represent a sample of the ornaments worn by its inhabitants.
Thirty six glass items excavated at Cârlomăneşti and Pietroasa Mică, Buzău County, Romania (3rd c. BC – 1st c. AD) were analysed for their chemical composition using external PIXE-PIGE at AGLAE ...accelerator, Paris and external PIXE at the 3 MV Tandetron™ accelerator, Măgurele, to reveal the raw materials and manufacturing procedures, trying to reconstruct the links between the Geto-Dacian populations and the Hellenistic, Celtic and Roman ones during that historical time.
The archaeological hypothesis was that these vitreous artefacts were luxury goods imported as such, made of fresh glass. The analyses showed that the objects were shaped from natron glass, with recipes typical for the Hellenistic period. Occasionally, glass recycling indicators were evidenced. Hints about the decolorizers (antimony, manganese) or chromophores (manganese, iron, cobalt, copper) were obtained.
This archaeometric study is a pioneering one, considering the absence from the literature of compositional data on glass finds discovered in Geto-Dacian settlements.
•Evidences of glass working and recycling activities of furnaces near the Roman city of Aquileia.•Clues that underpin hypothesis of centre for production of special coloured glass, such as amber, ...black, and emerald green glass.•Provenience of primary glass from both Egyptian and Syro-Palestinian furnaces.
A set of 29 glass shards, selected from numerous ones recovered in 2017 in Aquileia (NE Italy), was studied to provide evidence of local glass production for that specific area in antiquity. These shards can be dated between the 1st and the 4th century AD. The chemical composition of glass samples was obtained using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) that enables to quantify the concentration of major, minor, and trace elements needed to investigate provenance and compositional groups and sometimes to suggest a chronological frame of the samples. To ensure that the samples are homogeneous enough to perform accurate quantification, some of them were also analysed by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Most of the chunks, working wastes, and artefact shards considered in this work exhibited similarities among them in terms of composition, which likely indicates that glass working activities were practised at the site of recovery. The analyses demonstrated the presence of both recycled glass and primary glass. Interestingly, the compositional data of raw primary glass point to both Syro-Palestinian and Egyptian regions as sourcing areas, confirming the role of the Roman city of Aquileia as a network node for the trade of goods. In addition, some particularly coloured glass fragments showed a composition typical of glass produced starting from the 1st or 2nd century AD, requiring specific types of furnaces and procedures for its manufacture, and suggesting the possibility of local highly-specialised production. The preliminary results of this work strengthen the hypothesis that Aquileia was a thriving centre, either for working primary glass or for glass recycling and production of objects with particular colours.
PDF
