GLAS AS EXPRESSIONS FOR URBAN FLOWS. THE CASE OF GERASA/JERASH FROM THE ROMAN TO THE ISLAMIC PERIOD
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-01-11

This paper will focus on the results of recent studies of the glass found in the Northwest Quarter of the Decapolis city Gerasa/Jerash, which flourished from the Roman period into the mid-eight century CE. The glas, which has been typologically and chronologically ordered and which date to between the Roman period (1st century CE) and the middle of the 8th century CE, when Gerasa was devastated by a heavy earthquake, has been found in the context of the archaeological investigations undertaken by the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project, which has been on-going since 2011. Examinations have shown that glas stemming from the Northwest Quarter, both domestic and public contexts, was heavily recycled and reused beginning in the Late Antique period and continuing into the early Islamic periods. This observation tells us about the priorities of the urban society when it came to glas as an urban commodity. Furthermore the isotopic analysis of the glasses have shown that changes in the way in which fuel was used took place over time. This paper discusses the broader implications of these results and puts them into a broader cultural historical context pertaining to the region as well as the Mediterranean World in general.


Author(s): Raja, Rubina (Aarhus University; Centre for Urban Network Evolutions) - Lichtenberger, Achim (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster)