Microanalytical Perspectives on the Evolution of Glass-making Technologies

Summary

Glass has a number of distinct chemical types which are restricted in space and time and reflect several processes including (1) the spread of a dominant glass-making technology from an inferred single place of invention by the transfer knowledge and skill through the movement of people; (2) modification of the parent technology due to restricted availability of materials or selective improvement; (3) the re-invention of glass making due to stimulus diffusion in the form of exposure to imported objects.

In the present paper, I suggest that in addition to the widespread evidence for technological transfer, there is evidence for the re-invention of distinctive glass-making technologies in at least three regions over the past four thousand years, and probably others.

Glass technology is thought to have originated in Bronze Age Mesopotamia but evidence is extremely limited due to poor preservation and recovery. However, a comparison of the materials science of Near Eastern vitreous materials with those of glass characteristic of other regions and periods, especially first millennium BCE China, allows insights into the likely trajectory of early glass-making technology and the desirable properties which gave rise to what was, in the first instance, a purely decorative material.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Micro-worlds, materiality and human behaviour: Magnifying material science in explanations of technology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage