Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Blast from the Glass: Provenance, Occurrence, Corrosion and Preservation (Late Bronze Age to Pre-Roman Times)
Content:
Vitreous materials were broadly circulated in the Mediterranean and across Europe throughout late prehistory and history, holding an abundant and ubiquitous presence in burial and settlement contexts. Since the Late Bronze Age onwards, long distance exchange systems evolved, connecting the shores of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Mesopotamia and the Nile in Egypt with the Aegean, Europe and the coast of the Baltic and North Seas, establishing a vast network exchanging materials and ideas. At all its ends, as well as at key sites in between, Egyptian and Mesopotamian glass and related materials have been found, inaugurating a dialogue between significant centres of this network.
Archaeological and archaeometric research in recent decades has greatly enhanced our understanding of the production and distribution of vitreous materials across time and space, resulting in a complex, yet fascinating, picture of the socio-economic and cultural aspects underlying vitreous production. Nevertheless, our insight into the technology and provenance of earlier glass artifacts in Europe and geographically related areas, while in expanse, still requires studies aggregating the material culture of the regions involved in this trade and investigating the patterning of vitreous materials in the areas they reached.
Alongside, vitreous materials do suffer a great degree of degradation, with the smaller objects, such as beads and relief plaques, being particularly vulnerable. The degree, extent and nature of this degradation -critically distorting the visual characteristics of the artefacts- affect the way in which the material can be studied and interpreted by archaeologists, conservation scientists and archaeometrists. Thus, the central themes to this session revolve around provenance, occurrence and the role of vitreous materials in the Late Bronze Age towards pre-Roman times in Europe, the Mediterranean, Egypt and the Near East, alongside corrosion and preservation issues.
Keywords:
vitreous materials, late bronze age, pre-roman period, provenance, corrosion
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
ARTEMIOS OIKONOMOU (Cyprus) 1,2,3
Co-organisers:
Maria Kaparou (Greece) 2
Melina Smirniou (United Kingdom) 4
Affiliations:
1. Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC), The Cyprus Institute
2. Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics, NCSR Demokritos
3. The Department of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art, University of West Attica
4. University of Lincoln, School of History & Heritage, Lincoln, UK
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