The composition of late Romano-British colourless vessel glass: glass production and consumption

Glass Making in the Greco-Roman World: Results of the ARCHGLASS project

“…Secondary production of glass dating from Imperial to early Byzantine times has also been found at Sagalassos, Turkey (Degryse et al, 2006a). The archaeological evidence for glassmaking in the western part of the Empire is scarce, but, by the late Roman period, glasshouses where vessels or window glass were fabricated were well established across this region (Foster and Jackson, 2010). For example, more than 70 workshops have been excavated in France (Foy et al, 2003;Nenna, 2007;Price, 2005), and more than 20 in Britain (Jackson et al, 2003a, b;Paynter, 2006;Price, 2005).…”

“…Elevated concentrations of these elements (over 1000 ppm) suggest they were deliberately added to the glass batch to influence the colour of the resulting product. Concentrations between about 100 ppm and 1000 ppm are typically interpreted as indications for glass recycling (Freestone et al, 2002a;Silvestri et al, 2005;Degryse and Shortland, 2009;Foster and Jackson, 2010). Remelting a batch of colourless cullet with small amounts of coloured fragments would result in concentrations of these colouring elements not high enough to significantly alter the colour and suggest intentional addition, but too high to be explained by natural impurities in the sand raw materials.…”

Late antique glass distribution and consumption in Cyprus: a chemical study

“…In order to distinguish high lime from low-lime weak HIMT (Foster and Jackson, 2010), we decided to introduce the label HLIMT, standing for High Lime Iron Manganese Titanium. Material with similar composition emerged already in previous papers that discussed glass from Merovingian, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon and Albanian contexts (Freestone, 2008).…”

“…Egyptian glass was limited to few fragments in the south of the region (Rehren et al, 2010;Schibille et al, 2012). However, moving farther away from the eastern Mediterranean towards the northwestern provinces of the Empire, Levantine 1 is often found in minor quantities (see 4the5th century Britain (Foster and Jackson, 2010), 5th century Bulgaria (Rehren and Cholakova, 2014), 5the6th century Albania (Conte et al, 2014)). …”

“…HIMT was the main competitor of Levantine glass. Practically absent in Jordan (Rehren et al, 2010;Schibille et al, 2012), HIMT dominated the west Mediterranean market (Foy et al, 2003;Freestone et al, 2005;Foster and Jackson, 2010;Rehren and Cholakova, 2014;Conte et al, 2014). Cyprus, on the other hand, lies in close proximity to both primary production areas and it was an important hub for both regions along the maritime connections between east and west regions.…”