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157 Abstract Roman glass is known for its compositional homogeneity , a feature that has been related to the use of sand and an evaporite soda-rich alkali (natron or trona) in production. Recent work has suggested that, at least for the fourth-century AD and later Roman glasses, a small number of discrete compositional groups can be identified. These groups have been interpreted in terms of mass production of raw glass at specific locations in the eastern Mediterranean, which was then distributed to specialist glass-working centers elsewhere in the empire. For earlier Roman glasses a clearer picture relating to production location and organization is now beginning to emerge. This chapter examines the search for provenance and examines in more detail first-century AD Roman glasses from consumption contexts in Britain and France to determine compositional patterns within the glasses. Initial findings suggest that discrete chemical groups can be identified relating to different glass colors but more specifically to the use of very different glass-forming raw materials. This difference implies that as early as the first-century manufacturing sites specialized in producing primary glass of differing colors. The archaeological evidence from shipwrecks indicates that these glasses were mass produced and distributed as chunk glass for reworking elsewhere, a model that mimics that recently identified through compositional evidence for fourth-century AD glasses. The compositional characteristics of these glasses and their contribution to the continuing debate concerning the organization of glass production and distribution in the Roman world is discussed. 1. Introduction The products of the Roman glass industry are commonly found throughout the Roman world and beyond. The early Roman glass industry grew out of the Hellenistic glass industry, which was typified by core formed and cast vessels in a range of bright colors. The use of blue, purple, and green glasses especially, less commonly found in other media such as metals and ceramics, dominated the early assemblages. These early period glasses were luxury goods (Grose 1991), although as early as the first century AD glass was a relatively common product (Price and Cotam 1998). By the mid second century, and with the adoption of blowing as the main form of production, glasses ceased to be used solely for luxury items and were used as container vessels and other utilitarian forms such as tablewares and window glasses, mainly because glass was impervious to liquids, could be easily mass produced, and was transparent—a new concept that was brought about through blowing. Its prevalence in the archaeological record would suggest that, certainly by the mid second century AD, glass was a mass-produced commodity and there was an extensive and complex glass industry. In contrast, few glass production sites have been identified in the archaeological record. Those industrial areas that have been recorded are small-scale installations that show glass melting for a local market rather than large-scale industrial Chapter 12 On the Provenance of Roman Glasses Caroline M. Jackson 158 | OBSIDIAN AND GLASS PROVENANCE glass production (e.g., Price and Cool 1991; Foy 1991; Follmann-Schulz 1991; Price 2002). In the absence of reliable archaeological evidence for production sites, and only tentative suggestions for putative regional manufacturing locations based upon distribution patterns of identified types of glasses, other avenues of exploration have been sought, such as glass provenancing through chemical analysis. The premise here, as in many other fields of analysis within archaeology, is that glass produced from the primary raw materials, at discrete centers, will have a chemical “fingerprint” that will differentiate it from glasses produced at other locations (assuming it has been produced using standardized raw materials and manufacturing techniques and that these are different from those at other glass-making centers). 2. Compositional studies of Roman glasses While the styles and fashions seen in the consumption of Roman glasses throughout the empire change, their composition over time is relatively homogeneous through five to six hundred years. This homogeneity was noted as early as the 1950s by Turner (1956a) and Sayre and Smith (1961) and was still deemed a problem for understanding provenance and technology of Roman glasses as late as the end of the last century (Nenna et al. 1997). Thus the analyses of consumption assemblages containing glasses of apparently different types and styles, which were thought to be produced at different centers , are generally indistinguishable chemically, or no clear patterns relating to composition or style can be identified. This compositional stability may in part be attributable to the raw materials used to manufacture Roman...

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