Islamic Plant-Ash Glass Trade in the Eastern Silk Roads: New Insight from Nishapur

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Islamic plant-ash glass was extensively traded along the Silk Roads, offering insights into inter-regional connectivity and local material culture development in medieval Eurasia. Research on plant-ash glass has largely focused on evidence from the Near East, while the role of plant-ash glasses in the eastern Silk Road societies, including Iran, Central Asia, and western China, is not well understood. We present our current progress, in particular focusing on an 11th–12th century assemblage unearthed in Shadyakh, Nishapur, Iran. Using chemical and isotopic composition to provenance glass, our results suggest diverse origins and potential recycling practices. We find that trade brought glass from Iraq, Syria, Central Asia, and potentially Iran to Shadyakh, showing that both eastward and westward flows of glass products occurred and that utilitarian glass was traded across distances. Glasses with compositional signatures of Central Asia, the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin, and possibly Iran are often found in the same context, implying a common trade network for glasses with different origins, designs, and functions. It is plausible that major metropolises such as Nishapur where various types of glass were gathered, traded, and sometimes reworked, facilitated the “mix and match” of diverse glasses along this major trade artery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53413