Ancient Roman glassware

A total of 1496 investigated colourless glass analyses have been collected with the aim of achieving a clear geographical, typological, chronological and compositional overview on this particular type of glass. Based on manganese and antimony contents, four main groups were characterised: naturally colourless, Mn-decoloured, Sb-decoloured and Mn/Sb-decoloured. Main achievements relates to the chronological distribution of manganese and antimony technologies, the former being associated to a long lasting technology which culminated during the Late Antique period while the latter being practically absent after the 8 th century AD, being at its acme during the Roman imperial period. Except for naturally colourless glass, glass-making technology mostly implied the use of impure sands and na-tron, relegating the other components to a virtually irrelevant presence, except during the Late Antique and Medieval periods.

«In my opinion, the material that murrhine vases were made of, was simply brownish agate, of
which numerous and well-known ancient vases and bowls have passed down to us, conserved
integrally or in fragments in various museums and treasuries, such as in the Treasury of San
Marco, the Museo degli Argenti or the Capitoline Museum...
My conviction is strengthened, I believe, by a simple linguistic consideration. To date, no
one has noticed that the adjectival form murrinus, generally attributed to vasa or pocula, can,
in all likelihood, be linked to a root found in Indo-Iranian languages, mudrā in Sanskrit and
muhr in Middle Iranian, the main meaning being a seal. I don’t think I am going too far from
the truth to suppose that the adjective murrinus alludes to a hardstone (thus chalcedony or agate)
that seals were made of.
For the ancients, agate did not always correspond to today’s agate, but covered jaspers and
fne chalcedony-based materials; nor is it therefore surprising that the very particular brown
agate of this costly treasure (and it is without any foundation that it is called Sardonyx by some
modern scholars, which for the ancients was something entirely diferent) was regarded as a
mineral species in its own right.
I certainly do not claim with these lines, to have provided a solution to this age-old problem,
which would require a detailed analysis of the texts, but I felt it to be an opportune moment to
mention it. I will return to the subject on another occasion.»
So Raniero Gnoli wrote in the 1980’s on page 230 of the 2nd edition of Marmora Romana
(1988), promising to go into the subject further in another publication.
Likewise (and more than a hundred years before), Roman lawyer Faustino Corsi, in the draft
of the 2nd edition of his Delle Pietre Antiche (1828), wrote that he would soon be publishing a
work on Murrhine Vases.
Faustino Corsi returned to the topic and in 1830 he published a pamphlet entitled De Vasi
Murrini, where he identifed the Murrhina described by Pliny with Fluorspar (Fluorite), possibly
as a response to Ignazio Paternò who in 1781, had published with the same title, a study
that was temporally the closest, but the furthest apart in the conclusions.
Prof. Gnoli never returned with a text on this subject (he has investigated and published
many others in the meantime) and in many years of knowing each other, we have often discussed
the necessity to clarify this theme once and for all, which has been much debated and
published over the centuries.
I hope, with this work, to have met my friend Raniero Gnoli’s expectations, and to have developed
both fully and comprehensively, his initial intuitions.

Successive discoveries of twenty-two lecture halls, dated back to the late Roman period, appeared from the 1980s till 2005 by the Polish -Egyptian mission at Kom el-Dikka archaeological site in Alexandria.
      Its unique architecture (benches, high professor chair and occasionally vestibule) and their location between many public buildings (Thermae, odium, palaestrae, and porticoes) evoked many questions in researchers mind, for instance:
- Is there a relation with the other surrounding public buildings?
- Is their location on purpose or not?
- What about its construction's reasons, education level, and type (secular/ religious/ military)?
      Working as an archaeologist at the site, who had the chance to participate in the excavation as a trainee then as a representative of MoA with the 2005 season team, who have discovered the last unit (two lecture halls and a passageway) of the whole complex. It helped me a lot to get the answers, and revealing the veil up to discover its prototype, its architectural development, and also reflect the importance of Alexandria as an educational center prominent with its Greek culture in the ancient Roman world.
Kholoud Shawky
Archaeologist at Kom El-Dikka site.

The so-called Silk Road routes of the 1st millennium AD promoted the spread of ideas and
artistic trends, advanced technology, arms, horse harness etc. Glass had played an important role
in the exchange network between the West and the East as well as South and North ever since
antiquity. Most of the archaeological glass (vessels, personal ornaments) from the Eastern end of
the Silk Road (China, Korea) comes from ‘special’ places, such as elite burials and Buddhist
temples. Their importance for ancient Chinese and Korean societies, where precious stones,
bronzes and porcelains played a significant role, remains an open issue. The origin of glass artifacts
found along the Silk Road, particularly in China and Korea, is still debatable. Transparent glass
vessels unearthed in China are rare, usually interpreted as Western imports, proving trade relations
along the so-called Silk Roads. Most of them come from elite graves, while others were deposited
in temple treasuries, like the famous treasure from Famen Si (Shaanxi province). In both instances,
the suggestion is that objects of this kind were valuable and highly appreciated, thus probably
quite rare in China. The latest studies, especially laboratory analyses, have thrown new light on
the origin of the glass finds from China, raising at the same time multiple issues concerning their
cultural and social context. The aim of the present paper is to analyse the chronological and
geographical distribution of Western-related glass vessels within the present territory of the Peoples
Republic of China, as well as Korea and Japan, and to discuss social interactions and processes
which caused these goods to reach Chinese territory and beyond. The final goal is to understand
the reception of these exotic goods by the local population in terms of their meaning and value.

In 1936 and 1938 several graves from the Hellenistic and Roman periods were discovered during the construction works in Budva (gr. Βουθόη, lat. Budua; Montenegro, figure 1). Unfortunately, the material from these first discoveries (digging for hotel building) was split and sold, ending up in several museums of former Yugoslavia (Belgrade, Cetinje, Split, Zagreb) as well as in private collections. One part of the material that was separated in 1938 is now part of the Roman collection at the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb (Croatia),1 which will be included and discussed in this paper. The collection in Zagreb includes 65 almost completely preserved glass vessels, all of them purchased in the period from the 1940s to 1950s from several art dealers or collectors. The context of the glass vessels is therefore unknown, so the old material has so far only been studied typologically.

As intervenções arqueológicas no sítio da Quinta do Ervedal (Castelo Novo, Fundão) revelaram várias estruturas, de cronologia romana, distribuídas por 3 sectores de escavação, onde se destacam dois grandes complexos termais, distando cerca de 50 metros um do outro. Não é consensual a tipologia de ocupação do local: deverá corresponder pelo menos a uma villa não estando, no entanto, descartada a hipótese de se tratar de um aglomerado secundário, do tipo vicus, tendo por base a vasta área de dispersão de materiais à superfície, de cerca de 10 hectares.
O espólio exumado nas campanhas arqueológicas de 2007 a 2016, nomeadamente terra sigillata e suas imitações, paredes finas, lucernas, ânforas, e vidros, provêm de vários pontos do Mundo Romano e cujas cronologias de produção inserem-se, grosso modo, entre a 1ª metade do século I d.C. e meados do século V d.C., comprovando a integração do sítio na multitude de rotas comerciais patentes na Península Ibérica.
Os objectivos da presente Dissertação passam por realizar a quantificação tipológica do espólio presente em estratigrafia, para a aferição de volumes de importação; analisar globalmente o conjunto, procurando compreender a evolução do comércio ao longo da ocupação do sítio; e por fim, comparar estes dados com outros locais no interior da Lusitania, procurando obter informações sobre os padrões de consumo nesta região e as rotas comerciais que a abasteciam, com destaque para a denominada Via da Prata, pelo seu possível papel preponderante no abastecimento de produtos para o sítio.

**Attention!** After I've just realized (April 2021) an error in the specification of the units of measurement in the captions of the profile images (cm instead of mm), I have uploaded a corrected version of the poster. Sorry, but mistakes happen.

This poster was presented  at the anniversary conference "Glass of the Caesars @ 30" in November 2017 at the British Museum London.

There are records of more than 360 glass vessels and fragments with cold-worked figurative cuts and engravings from the late antiquity. They were produced in different areas of the Western Roman world and are categorized by stylistic features into various groups or so-called workshops. However, to this day, there is neither any archaeological evidence of such a workshop nor have any working tools or illustrations of this special artistic craft been found. Since the first finds in the 19th century, the many suggestions regarding potential tools and techniques stand in profound contrast to the lack of thorough investigations.
The author’s dissertation in archaeology on “The late antique figure-engraved glasses” is an interdisciplinary research project which includes a modern documentation of these objects via digital microscopy and portable X-ray fluorescence analysis in order to arrive at substantiated conclusions regarding “workshop groups”, used tools and artistic practice (technique, style). Therefore, about 100 relevant vessels and fragments were analyzed by the author including 18 glasses which were presented at the 1987 Glass of the Caesars exhibition. A new generation of digital microscopes makes it possible not only to get high-resolution images of the engravings but also three-dimensional cross-sectional views and exact measurements of the corresponding profiles.

The Association for the History of Glass in conjunction with the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities and the Department of Scientific Research of the British Museum is organising a 2-day seminar from Friday 3rd to Saturday 4 th November, 2017 (please note the NEW date), to be held in the British Museum to mark the 30th anniversary of the Glass of the Caesars exhibition. While the exhibition concentrated upon luxury Roman glass, this seminar will be more wide-ranging in scope while also considering how our understanding, appreciation, and presentation of Roman glass has changed over the past 30 years. The seminar is open to researchers at any stage of their career and the organisers would like to invite proposals for papers up to 20 minutes in length and poster presentations that will be grouped into sessions based on the following broad themes: • Organisation of the Roman glass industry including developments in our understanding of primary and secondary working, the production of coloured and colourless glass, and the trade in raw and finished glass • Production techniques including non-blown, blown, and mould-blown glass • Hot and cold decoration of glass, including cameo-and other cutting, and gold-glass vessels • Regional traditions across the Roman Empire and beyond • The contribution of scientific analysis, experimental work, and other research methods to Roman glass studies • The changing roles of museums in the presentation of ancient glass and public engagement with glass studies Please send proposals (title and short abstract up to 200 words) to Martine Newby Haspeslagh (martine@didierltd.com or info@didierantiques.com) by 25 th March, 2017. Details of the registration fee, advice on accommodation, possible bursaries, and a draft programme will be made available in April (www.historyofglass.org.uk)

In the period from 1952-1967, during the systematic archaeological excavations of the area of the eastern necropolis of Naissus, in the modern day city quarter of Jagodin Mala, in Nis, a large number of glass objects was found. A representative portion of the findings was published in various publications, while the other findings, which belong to the study collection of the National Museum in Nis, have not been the subject of any separate study. These are new kinds of findings, such as glass lamps, window panes and tesserae, and the collection also includes the familiar, standard repertoire of glass vessels of the Late Antiquity period. The findings come from the grave units, the cemetery basilica with its crypt, and the archaeological layers from the area of the necropolis in Jagodin Mala. Besides the typological-chronological, as well as the topographic analysis, the paper also presents a complete image of the glass objects from the area of the necropolis, used in the burial and ...

Resumen Es importante establecer una adecuada metodología para estudiar los códigos sobre algunos vidrios decorados, interpretando sus imágenes. Este artículo explora una nueva área de investigación, identificando emblemas, estandartes, insignias y diseños dentro del equipamiento militar, entre los fondos soplados a molde (Isings 50), vidrios facetados, grabados, y del tipo mosaico. Varios tipos y modelos fueron utilizados por las legiones romanas. Aquellos símbolos y decoraciones militares del ejército romano fueron representados sobre vidrios romanos y otros objetos.

We present the glass objects found in the Roman villa of El Saucedo during the years 1986, 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2001, that date back to the end of the 3rd century and beginning of the 4th century. Among the objects we can name glasses, bowls, jars, dishes, etc. Apart from that we have to mention personal belongings such as bracelets, a pendant, beads, ointment bottles and sticks to stir perfumes, as well as window glass and tesserae.

This paper presents an analysis of strongly colored Roman vessel glass found in Augusta Emerita. The materials are from the early Imperial period and were found in the excavation of the Museum´s ground. The different typologies and technologies of the glass production are described. The source of the imported materials is proposed, as well as their distribution in Roman Hispania.