Neighbours and Successors of Rome; Traditions of Glass Production and use in Europe and the Middle East in the Later 1st Millennium AD

Presented through 20 case studies covering Europe and the Near East, Neighbours and Successors of Rome investigates development in the production of glass and the mechanisms of the wider glass economy as part of a wider material culture in Europe and the Near East around the later first millennium AD. Though highlighting and solidifying chronology, patterns of distribution, and typology, the primary aims of the collection are to present a new methodology that emphasises regional workshops, scientific data, and the wider trade culture.
By twinning a critique of archaeometric methods with the latest archaeological research, the contributors present a foundation for glass research, seen through the lens of consumption demands and geographical necessity, that analyses production centres and traditional typological knowledge. In so doing the they bridge an important divide by demonstrating the co-habitability of diverse approaches and disciplines, linking, for example, the production of Campanulate bowls from Gallaecia with the burgeoning international late antique style. Equally, the particular details of those pieces allow us to identify a regional style as well as local production. As such this compilation provides a highly valuable resource for archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians.

Table of Contents

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Glass from the later first millennium AD: current state of research
Daniel Keller, Jennifer Price and Caroline Jackson

The last Roman glass in Britain: recycling at the periphery of the empire
Caroline Jackson and Harriet Foster

Opaque yellow glass production in the early medieval period: new evidence
James R. N. Peake and Ian C. Freestone

The vessel glass assemblage from Anglo-Saxon occupation at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire
Rose Broadley

Glassworking at Whitby Abbey and Kirkdale Minster in North Yorkshire
Sarah Paynter, Sarah Jennings and Jennifer Price

Glass workshops in northern Gaul and the Rhineland in the first millennium AD as hints of a changing land use – including some results of the chemical analyses of glass from Mayen
Martin Grünewald and Sonngard Hartmann

Campanulate bowls from Gallaecia: evidence for regional glass production in late antiquity
Mário da Cruz

The Wilshere Collection of late Roman gold-glass at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Susan Walker

The “proto-history” of Venetian glassmaking
David Whitehouse

Late Roman glass from South Pannonia and the problem of its origin
Mia Leljak

Glass supply and consumption in the late Roman and early Byzantine site Dichin, northern Bulgaria
Thilo Rehren and Anastasia Cholakova

An early Christian glass workshop at 45, Vasileos Irakleiou Street in the centre of Thessaloniki
Anastassios Ch. Antonaras

Glass tesserae from Hagios Polyeuktos, Constantinople: their early Byzantine affiliations
Nadine Schibille and Judith McKenzie

Successors of Rome? Byzantine Glass Mosaics
Liz James

Glass from the Byzantine Palace at Ephesus in Turkey
Sylvia Fünfschilling

Late Roman and early Byzantine glass from Heliopolis/Baalbek
Hanna Hamel and Susanne Greiff

Changes in glass supply in southern Jordan in the later first millennium AD
Susanne Greiff and Daniel Keller

Egyptian glass abroad: HIMT glass and its markets
Marie-Dominique Nenna

Continuity and change in Byzantine and early Islamic glass from Syene/Aswan and Elephantine, Egypt
Daniel Keller

Sasanian glass: an overview
St John Simpson

Daniel Keller wrote his doctoral thesis on the glass finds from Petra in Jordan at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Byzantinische Archäologie Mainz in Germany from 2006 to 2009, and has been a librarian in the University of Basel since 2009. He has particular research interests in late antique, Byzantine and early Islamic glass in Jordan and Egypt.

Jennifer Price is Emeritus Professor of Roman Provincial Archaeology at Durham University, UK. Her PhD in Archaeology from Cardiff University, UK was on Roman glass in Spain and she has longstanding research interests in Roman and early Medieval glass from archaeological sites in western Europe and the Mediterranean region.

Caroline Jackson is Reader in Archaeological Meterials in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests are in the study and scientific analysis of archaeological materials, specialising in glass and other vitreous materials such as faience, particularly relating to Bronze Age Egypt and the Aegean and on Roman glasses from consumption contexts.