USE OF NATRON-TYPE GLASS FROM THE LEVANT IN EARLY MEDIEVAL FRANCE
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-01-11

For more than a thousand years, most of the glass in Europe and the Mediterranean derived from the Levantine coast or Egypt. The abandonment of natron as flux and the collapse of the centralised production model of Antiquity represent one of the most important developments in the history of glass. During the last two decades, advances in the chemical analysis of archaeological glasses have established an increase in recycling prior to the adoption of plant or wood ash as alkalis at the end of the 8th or in the 9th century AD. In fact, Roman and late antique cullet represents the main source of supply in late Merovingian and early Carolingian secondary glass workshops in France. However, archaeological and archaeometric data have also demonstrated that raw glass was still used during this period to produce vessels and stained glass windows. The present paper discusses the analytical evidence from early medieval glass workshops and several consumption sites in France (monasteries, churches, urban and rural settlements) dating to the late 7th to early 9th century. Analyses have been conducted by LA-ICP-MS at the Ernest-Babelon Centre (IRAMAT, Orleans) to determine the major, minor and trace element compositions and by extension the origin of the glass. Following the classification proposed by Phelps et al. 2016, the glass identified as uncontaminated by recycling turns out to come from the Eastern Mediterranean. Workshop waste and typological data show moreover that Levantine natron glass was locally transformed and not imported as finished products. This then prompts the question whether or not this type of virtually pristine glass was reserved for specific productions or commissions. Phelps M., Freestone I. C., Gorine-Rosen Y., Gratuze B., Natron glass production and supply in the late antique and early medieval Near East: The effect of the Byzantine-Islamic transition, JAS, 75, 2016, 57-71.


Author(s): Pactat, Inès (MSHE C. N. Ledoux - USR 3124, University of Burgundy - Franche-Comté)