Insights into Early Medieval Irish Glass: Preliminary Findings, Promises, and Limitations of an Archaeometric Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Glass is a common find on early medieval Irish sites, having been found in association with native Irish settlement-enclosures, monastic centers, and Viking towns. Evidence for secondary production (the recycling and reworking of existing glass to form new objects) has been identified for each of these site types. No evidence for primary production (making glass from raw materials) has been found. As a result, all early medieval Irish glass represents imported material, which could have then been reworked at secondary production centers. Prior research has established chronologies for European glass compositional groups from late antiquity through the early medieval period. While there has been some work on the early medieval Irish glass assemblage (e.g., identifying imported vessels, visual classification of beads, and limited chemical analysis), a more thorough understanding of the chemical compositional groups represented in the Irish assemblage embedded within the broader archaeological context of settlement, craft production, and exchange practices holds the potential to improve our understanding of the early medieval Irish socioeconomic structure. In this paper, I provide preliminary insights from a pXRF analysis of a selection of glass from eight early medieval Irish sites and discuss the promises and limitations of a wider archaeometric study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39154.0