Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn. Laure Dussubieux. Shinu Abraham. Alok Kanungo.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass—and particularly the glass bead—was a common commodity of Indian Ocean trade, beginning as early as the mid-first millennium BCE and continuing through the second millennium CE. While existing elemental and isotopic analyses of glass beads recovered from outside India have identified glass production recipes likely from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Larson. Kristin Landau. Laure Dussubieux.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2026, the Corning Museum of Glass—a world-renowned institution for glass studies in upstate New York—will update its major permanent exhibit of historical glass, “35 Centuries of Glass.” This reinstallation is committed to telling a more global, inclusive, and contextualized history of glass that features little-known and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akshay Sarathi. Laure Dussubieux. Jonathan Walz.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Unguja Ukuu (sixth–eleventh cenuries CE) and Kizimkazi Dimbani (twelfth century CE) are early trading sites on Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania in eastern Africa. Here we investigate patterns of glass bead trade at these sites, examining continuities and change between sites and over time. Glass bead samples from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Carter. Kelby Beyer.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though Iron Age (500 BCE–500 CE) Southeast Asian glass ornament research is a well-established field, previous studies have almost exclusively examined the glass beads comprising the majority of glass ornament assemblages at Iron Age Southeast Asian sites. Even when other ornament types are noted, these descriptions are of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Nash-Pye. Andrew Meek. St John Simpson.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of Islamic glass bangles has been undertaken on a localized or regional level by a number of authors. However, with advances in archaeochemistry the analysis of the primary production glass is offering new insights and contextualization to their typological and coloration differences. The presence of Islamic glass...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tayla Hanson. Emma Kissel. Charlotte Nash.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents research on glass bangle fragments believed to be from the Al Hasa oasis in Saudi Arabia, donated to the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH). Glass bangles were manufactured and widely traded across the Middle East and South Asia, but there has not yet been a comprehensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Foreman Bandama.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The northwestern parts of Zimbabwe lie at a critical junction between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and—during the late Iron Age—witnessed major cultural changes. This includes possible migrations historically tied to the decline of major states to the south. Beads lubricated these transformations, making it possible to connect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Jefferys.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present information on a subsection of glass beads from a diverse collection of artifacts that are presumed to be from the Al Hasa Oasis region in Saudi Arabia and donated to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH). Although glass beads and objects are a commonly studied artifact in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilee Wood. Laure Dussubieux. Stephanie Wynne-Jones. Jeffrey Fleisher.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Songo Mnara lies on a small island of the same name just to the south of Kilwa Kisiwani in Tanzania. It was occupied mainly in the fifteenth century CE and its assemblage of 7,444 glass beads provides us with a unique view into Indian Ocean trade to East Africa in this period. A comprehensive study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laure Dussubieux. Ariane de Saxcé. Nimal Perera. Mangala Katugampola.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A little more than 25 years ago, glass furnaces were discovered at Giribawa, a site located in the northwest part of the island of Sri Lanka. Chemical analysis revealed that raw glass and glass beads were certainly manufactured at this site. Excavations have resumed at Giribawa in 2022, with a special focus on the glass...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joe Merchant. Jeffrey Fleisher. Gry Barfod.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports on an assemblage of Indian Ocean glass beads excavated from the Middle Iron Age mound of Miyoba in western Zambia, at the hook of the Kafue River. Miyoba was a long-occupied settlement during the late first and early second millennium CE represented by approximately 5 m of occupation debris that includes house...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shinu Anna Abraham. Laure Dussubieux. Thomas Fenn. Alok Kumar Kanungo.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite the widespread distribution of Indian-made glass beads around the Indian Ocean and beyond, not much is known about South Asia’s early glass industries from the first centuries BCE through the second millennium CE. This paper will present an overview of an ongoing project designed to use elemental and isotopic...