Environmental Impact of Glass Production in Post-Medieval Estonia

Author(s): Monika Reppo

Year: 2023

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Post-medieval Archaeology and Pollution", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Glass production is and was an industry that exhausts natural resources. The destruction of forests surrounding early post-medieval glassworks in Europe was a given - the glassworks would often simply move to the next spot after depleting their resource of fuel and potash. The extraction of sand also had an environmental impact. The first Estonian glassworks were opened in the 1620s when Estonia belonged to the Swedish Kingdom. By the end of the 18th century, when Czarist Russia had taken over, there were several dozen glassworks in operation. During the period under study, multiple conservation laws, rules of land use and other methods were implemented to restrict the (over)use of natural resources. This paper examines the life cycles of Estonian glassworks in the 17th-19th century and their impact on the natural environment using archival and archaeological sources as well as aerial photography and LiDAR data.

Cite this Record

Environmental Impact of Glass Production in Post-Medieval Estonia. Monika Reppo. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Lisbon, Portugal. 2023 ( tDAR id: 476116) ; doi:10.48512/XCV8476116

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

Material
Glass

Site Name
Hüti glassworks

Investigation Types
Archaeological Overview • Collections Research • Historic Background Research • Records Search / Inventory Checking • Remote Sensing • Site Evaluation / Testing

General
conservation laws • Estonia • Glass production

Geographic Keywords
Estonia

Temporal Keywords
17th - 19th centuries • Historical Archaeology

Temporal Coverage

None: 1620 to 1840

Spatial Coverage

min long: 21.837; min lat: 57.526 ; max long: 28.164; max lat: 59.658 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow

File Information

  Name Size Creation Date Date Uploaded Access
2.-Reppo.-Environmental-impact.pdf 2.27mb Jun 1, 2023 Jun 20, 2023 1:33:22 AM Public
This is a PowerPoint presentation from the session entitled "Post-medieval Archaeology and Pollution", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Reppo--M.-2023.-Environmental-impact-of-glass-production-in-po... 293.75kb Jun 1, 2023 Jun 20, 2023 1:33:23 AM Public
This is a paper from the session entitled "Post-medieval Archaeology and Pollution", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.