Het Romeinse castellum van Oudenburg (prov. West-Vlaanderen) herontdekt: de archeologische campagne van augustus 2001 tot april 2005 
ter hoogte van de zuidwesthoek. Interim-rapport

Even though the importance of salt has diminished in current day society, researchers still contemplate its role and function in ancient societies and their economies. This shouldn't come as a surprise given its multifaceted and essential use in cooking, in craft industries (e.g. metallurgical processes, tannery…) and even in ritual practices. More importantly, salt was the preferred preservative of pre-modern societies enabling them to stuck up on provisions for the winter or military campaigns and to transport perishable products over longer distances. The ubiquitous and vital character salt represents paradoxically opposes the limited accessibility of the resource as salt only occurs in seawater, inland brine springs or geological layers. Its limited access made salt a highly sought after commodity of which the exploitation and trade were often controlled by the state, elites or specific groups within society to ensure not only a local supply for its inhabitants and the military apparatus but also to acquire and maintain wealth and status.

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50 shades of colour: how thickness, iron redox and manganese/antimony contents influence perceived and intrinsic colour in Roman glass

Bidegaray

Nys

Silvestri

et al. 2020

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Roman glass is studied here by means of optical absorption spectroscopy, in order to provide an objective method to quantitatively evaluate colour. The dataset is composed of 165 soda-lime-silicate glass samples from various western European sites, mainly dated from the 1 st to 4 th century AD, and containing variable amounts of iron, manganese and/or antimony. Iron redox ratios and colour coordinates (based on the CIELab colour system) are determined and put in relation with the thickness of samples and their manganese/antimony contents. Results reveal thickness as a crucial parameter when discussing glass hues, thus leading to a differentiation between the 'intrinsic' and perceived' colour of glass objects (i.e., the colour of the object with the thickness normalised to 1 mm, and that with its original thickness, respectively). Apart from HIMT and purple glass, the concentration of ferrous iron appears to be correlated with a*-a colourimetric parameter determining how green the glass is. Significant relations of antimony/manganese contents versus iron redox and glass colour are also considered, resulting in quantitative arguments to entitle antimony-decoloured glass as the most oxidised and colourless glass.

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Het Romeinse castellum van Oudenburg (prov. West-Vlaanderen) herontdekt: de archeologische campagne van augustus 2001 tot april 2005 ter hoogte van de zuidwesthoek. Interim-rapport

Cited by 11 publications

References 14 publications

Onderzoeksbalans archeologie in Vlaanderen Versie 1, 11/12/2008: Romeinse tijd

Onderzoeksbalans archeologie in Vlaanderen Versie 1, 11/12/2008: Romeinse tijd

Settling the Salinaria? Evaluating Site Location Patterns of Iron Age and Roman Salt Production in Northern Gaul

50 shades of colour: how thickness, iron redox and manganese/antimony contents influence perceived and intrinsic colour in Roman glass

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