Karl Hans Wedepohl (1925–2016) (Rehren & Kronz 2017, JGS 59)

Offprint from: Journal of Glass Studies 59, 2017 . 1796), sponsored by The Corning Museum of and cultural politics excited the ield in his second and third American decades. The Chesapeake school of material culture also grew up around him without his acknowledgment, favorable or otherwise. Noël Hume’s vision of the past was always a rough-and-tumble one, often at odds with museum presentation that, into the 1970s, remained focused on gentility and good taste. His re-creation of a messy colonial traveler’s room in the James Anderson House archaeological museum was clearly the most plausible and evocative exhibition space of that era at Colonial Williamsburg. His was a Hogarthian view of life with dirt on it, but not one that raised issues of race, class, or gender relations. Noël Hume was always fascinated with individual lives, but he paid no attention to broader patterns of social behavior. He sufered very publicly when the archaeological museums were closed and Carter’s Grove disappeared from the public sphere, as detailed in his A Passion for the Past (2010), more an emotional memoir than a career autobiography. Yet he outlived his own scholarly unfashionableness and was widely recognized for jump-starting Early Modern archaeology in the English-speaking world. His personal grace with younger archaeologists, particularly those who approached him with questions or with another unidentiied artifact, ofered redemption. In the Williamsburg region, by the time he reached the age of 89, his stature as a local hero was secure. Glass and the Smithsonian, and supported by Colonial Williamsburg. Noël Hume threw himself into the work of uncovering Amelung’s processes, as well as collecting specimens from contexts that would help to identify surviving table wares and bottles from the glassworks, which he was able to show were of unparalleled extent in the nascent nation. He published his report in the 1976 Journal of Glass Studies (v. 18), which was devoted entirely to Amelung. Marley Brown III assumed responsibility for Colonial Williamsburg’s excavation and the archaeological laboratory in 1982, and the Noël Humes moved to the Oice of Archaeological Documentation, continuing to work with the Martin’s Hundred material. The couple retired in 1987. Audrey Noël Hume died in 1993, and in 1994 Noël Hume married the former Carol Grazier, who, along with her children, survives him. Queen Elizabeth II made him an Oicer of the British Empire in 1992. Sherlock Holmes was Noël Hume’s favorite reading as a youth, he once told me, and he always maintained Holmes’s view that encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric data was key to good work in archaeology as well as in criminology. A Guide to Artifacts was his efort to make that data broadly available. For Noël Hume, a solitary fragment of an object that could generate an engaging story was always more important than counting shards or weighing bones, even if he called on the zooarchaeologist Stanley Olsen for certain analysis, as he did at Martin’s Hundred. This antiquarian’s perspective, along with hidebound political positions, cast Noël Hume as an unsympathetic igure when the New Archaeology and its anthropological attention to social systems * Edward A. Chappell Roberts Director of Architectural and Archaeological Research Emeritus Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, Virginia [email protected] * * Karl Hans Wedepohl (1925–2016) Professor Karl Hans Wedepohl, a leading geochemist of postwar Germany who, in his later life, made signiicant contributions to the study of Roman and medieval glass in central Europe, died, after a short illness, on May 19, 2016, at the age of 91. Born as the only child of a schoolteacher in a small Westphalian village, Wedepohl developed 454 early on a deep interest in nature, minerals, and fossils, which he collected in the surrounding hills, but he also liked history and enjoyed museum visits from a young age.1 Under the inluence of 1. We are grateful to the Wedepohl family for allowing us to consult his private papers and a draft of his autobiography. an inspiring chemistry teacher, he began to experiment in his mother’s kitchen, and he eventually decided to study chemistry. War intervened, however. Following his matriculation in the spring of 1943, he was drafted for military service, followed by a short captivity as a prisoner of war. Karl Hans Wedepohl began his academic career in the summer of 1946 at the University of Göttingen, one of the irst universities in Germany to reopen after World War II. Chemistry was oversubscribed, however, and he registered in mineralogy instead—a decision he never regretted, because it ofered him the opportunity to specialize in geochemistry. He also attended lectures in the history of art, pursuing interests away from the natural sciences. After only ive years of study, he received his Ph.D. in 1951, followed in 1956 by a higher doctorate (the German Habilitation), the formal qualiication needed at that time to become a professor. Postdoctoral visits as a research fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and the United States Geological Survey in 1956 and 1957 beneited him tremendously. In 1964, he was appointed professor of geochemistry at the University of Göttingen, a position he held until his retirement in 1993. His academic work, which earned him numerous professional honors, was fundamental in the development of geochemistry in Germany and beyond. The impact he had on the ield is seen, for example, in the citation count for one of his earliest publications, “Distribution of the Elements in Some Major Units of the Earth’s Crust” (with Karl K. Turekian), which appeared in the Geological Society of America Bulletin (v. 72, no. 2) in 1961 and has to date been cited 3,748 times,2 closely matched by his seminal paper “The Composition of the Continental Crust,” published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (v. 59, no. 7) in 1995, two years after his retirement, with a current citation count of 3,242. Handbook of Geochemistry, for which he served as editor in chief, was published by Springer in Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York in several volumes between 1969 and 1978, and it remains a standard reference work to the present day. This was not the only arrow in his quiver, however. In his 60s, Karl Hans Wedepohl forged a second successful academic career, in which he combined his geochemical expertise with his deep historical interest, particularly in classical antiquity Karl Hans Wedepohl. (Photo: Courtesy of Silke Triebold) and the European Middle Ages. For this, he began to focus his attention on the analysis of archaeological glass, illing a major gap in the German academic landscape. His irst publication in this ield, on forest glass from a site near Göttingen, appeared in 1989,3 quickly followed by a steady stream of additional papers, mostly in German but also in English. He will be best known to the many readers of the Journal of Glass Studies for his important work on the composition of late Roman and early medieval glass in northern Europe.4 One of the regions he investigated was the Hambacher Forest in western Germany. In Roman times, it was open agricultural land with numerous 2. According to Google Scholar, February 2017, https:// scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=wedepohl&btnG=& as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp= (accessed February 28, 2017). 3. “Zur Technologie hochmittelalterlicher Glasherstellung am Beispiel der Funde von der Waldglashütte Steimcke im Niemetal (Bramwald)” (with Hans-Georg Stephan), Göttinger Jahrbuch, v. 37, 1989, pp. 5–18. 4. E.g., “Medieval Lead Glass from Northwestern Europe” (with Ingeborg Krueger and Gerald Hartmann), Journal of Glass Studies, v. 37, 1995, pp. 65–82; “Colored Glass Wall Tiles from Corvey (Germany): Carolingian or Romanesque?” (with Uwe Lobbedey and Francesca Dell’Acqua), Journal of Glass Studies, v. 43, 2001, pp. 89–105; “Silver-Stained Windows at Carolingian Zalavár, Mosaburg (Southwestern Hungary)” (with Béla Miklós Szőke and Andreas Kronz), Journal of Glass Studies, v. 46, 2004, pp. 85–104; and “The Manufacture of Medieval Glass: Glassmaking in Europe between A.D. 500 and 1500,” in David Whitehouse, Medieval Glass for Popes, Princes, and Peasants, Corning: The Corning Museum of Glass, 2010, pp. 62–70. 455 villae and settlements, but more recently, it became a woodland relentlessly consumed by open-cast lignite mining to feed the power plants along the Rhine Valley. Here, ahead of their imminent destruction, Wolfgang Gaitzsch and his co-workers excavated a series of glass kilns, most of which were dated to the fourth century—the largest and best-documented collection of glass kilns from that period anywhere. Wedepohl recognized the significance of this assemblage for understanding the Roman glass industry in the Rhineland, which was widely known for its production of glass vessels in Cologne and Trier. Thanks to his academic standing and gentle but persistent personality, he was also allowed to sample glass inds from the cemeteries of Krefeld-Gellep and Hasselsweiler near Jülich, not far from Hambach. This enabled him to investigate the development and continuity of mineral natron glass use from late antiquity to the early medieval period.5 Another major area of interest was the role of the Church in establishing a northern European wood-ash or forest glass industry as part of the Carolingian expansion from about A.D. 800. In a series of remarkable papers on inds from Charlemagne’s palace at Paderborn, Carolingian monasteries (at Corvey [Höxter], Fulda, and Lorsch), and St. Hadrian’s Church at Zalavár (Hungary), he traced the change in glass composition from imported and increasingly recycled and contaminated late Roman mineral natron glass to the emergence of wood-ash glass in the High Middle Ages. He was able to show the irst use of wood-ash glass in the second half of the eighth century.6 A strong background in geochemistry helped Wedepohl advance analytical research on ancient glass. In a number of publications, he underlined the importance of isotope studies, using leadisotope abundance ratios for determining the provenance of lead glasses and demonstrating, through the analysis of strontium isotopic ratios, that most ancient glasses obtained their lime from recent marine shells, representing the strontium-isotopic composition of modern seawater, instead of geologically older limestone.7 He also emphasized early on the importance of trace-element analyses, which culminated in a major article, “Data on 61 Chemical Elements for the Characterization of Three Major Glass Compositions in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” co-authored by Klaus Simon and Andreas Kronz, and published in Archaeometry (v. 53, no. 1, pp. 81–102) in 2011. This focus on advanced analytical techniques did not overshadow his interest in the cultural signiicance of the artifacts he analyzed. A group of precious medieval tumblers, the Hedwig beakers, attracted his particular attention, and he was able to analyze fragments from several examples in his laboratory in Göttingen. The debate about the provenance of these beakers, made about 1200, is ongoing, with opposing arguments from natural scientists and historians.8 5. “Römische und fränkische Gläser aus dem Gräberfeld von Krefeld-Gellep” (with Renate Pirling and Gerald Hartmann), Bonner Jahrbücher, v. 197, 1997, pp. 177–189; “Spätrömische Glashütten im Hambacher Forst: Produktionsort der ECVAFasskrüge” (with Wolfgang Gaitzsch and others), Bonner Jahrbücher, v. 200, 2000, pp. 83–241; “Frühmerowingerzeitliche Glasherstellung in Hasselsweiler bei Jülich” (with Bernd Päfgen), Kölner Jahrbuch, v. 37, 2004 (2006), pp. 835–848. 6. “Glasfunde aus der karolingischen Pfalz in Paderborn und die frühe Holzasche-Glasherstellung” (with Gerald Hartmann and Wilhelm Winkelmann), Ausgrabungen und Funde in Westfalen-Lippe, v. 9A, 1997, pp. 41–53; “Mittelalterliches Glas aus dem Reichskloster und der Stadtwüstung Corvey” (with HansGeorg Stephan and Gerald Hartmann), Germania, v. 75, no. 2, 1997, pp. 673–715; “Mittelalterliche Gläser aus Höxter (ca. 800 bis 1530): Archäologie, Chemie und Geschichte,” Neue Ausgrabungen und Forschungen in Niedersachsen, v. 23, 2002, pp. 325–373; “Karolingerzeitliches Glas aus dem Kloster Lorsch” (with Markus Sanke and Andreas Kronz), Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, v. 30, 2002, pp. 37–75; “Karolingerzeitliches Glas und verschiedene Handwerksindizien aus dem Kloster Fulda” (with Thomas Kind and Andreas Kronz), Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, v. 31, 2003, pp. 61–93. 7. “The Use of Marine Molluskan Shells for Roman Glass and Local Raw Glass Production in the Eifel Area (Western Germany)” (with A. Baumann), Naturwissenschaften, v. 87, no. 3, 2000, pp. 129–132; “The Isotopic Composition of Lead and Strontium in Ancient Glass Relecting Its Provenance,” Annales de l’Association Internationale pour l’Histoire du Verre, v. 17, Antwerp, 2006 (2009), pp. 614–624. 8. Die Gruppe der Hedwigsbecher, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, II, MathematischPhysikalische Klasse, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1–33; “A Hedwig Beaker Fragment from Brno (Czech Republic)” (with David Merta, Marek Pešek, and Hedvika Sedláčková), Journal of Glass Studies, v. 49, 2007, pp. 266–268; “Überlegungen zur Herkunft der Hedwigsbecher,” Germania, v. 87, no. 1, 2009, pp. 265–269; “The Chemical Composition of a Fragment from the Hedwig Beaker Excavated at the Royal Palace at Buda (Budapest)” (with A. Kronz), Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, v. 60, fasc. 2, December 2009, pp. 441–443. 456 Karl Hans Wedepohl’s academic reasoning was always based on his geochemical understanding of the raw materials of glassmaking. Seeing his own work in light of the legacy of Victor Moritz Goldschmidt,9 he used his knowledge both to describe and to explain the chemical composition of glass. He emphasized this by using a strict nomenclature of the major glass types related to luxing raw materials: “soda-lime glass” for glass made of mineral soda (trona), “soda-ash glass” for glass made of halophytic plants, and “wood-ash glass” for glass made solely from the ash of tree trunks. With his work, Wedepohl almost single-handedly revitalized glass research in German archaeometry, which in the late 20th century had largely ignored ancient glass as a material worthy of study. Thanks to his energy, interpersonal skills, and excellent reputation as a leading scientist, he managed to study assemblages from a wide range of sites, covering much of Germany and reaching as far as Bulgaria and Scandinavia. He was a gifted speaker and a dedicated teacher, and it is no surprise that his textbook Glas in Antike und Mittelalter: Geschichte eines Werkstofs (Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart’sche, 2003) became a popular source for students and scholars in Germany and elsewhere. But even after publishing this magnum opus, his activities did not decline. He continued to use the analytical facilities he had helped to build at the Geoscience Center in Göttingen, where the elemental analysis of glass is now routinely performed by wavelength-dispersive electron microprobe. More recently, the necessity of trace-element analyses increasingly became a focus of his research group, which now uses laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LAICP-MS) as the state-of-the-art standard analytical tool for routinely quantifying more than 60 elements.10 Supported by his research group, Wedepohl remained active until after his 91st birthday. This continuity in his scientiic life was interrupted only by his annual trips to the Mediterranean to satisfy his never-ending curiosity about art and history. One of his last projects concerned the numerous glass inds from the Viking trade center at Hedeby in northern Germany. Sadly, he died just a few weeks before his publication of these inds was issued.11 The achievements of Karl Hans Wedepohl were widely recognized. Among his many academic awards, he was elected a member of the Academies of Sciences in Göttingen, Mainz, and Catania (Sicily). He also served as president and, later, for many years as treasurer of the German Mineralogical Society, and as vice president of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. He wrote or contributed to about 220 publications, including 72 on historical glass— a testament to a uniquely productive academic career.12 Thilo Rehren Professor of Archaeological Materials and Technologies UCL Institute of Archaeology London, England, United Kingdom [email protected] Andreas Kronz Research Assistant and Head, Electron Microprobe Laboratory Göttingen, Germany [email protected] 9. Goldschmidt (b. Switzerland, 1888–1947) was one of the founders of geochemistry. In 1929, he was appointed to a chair in Göttingen, but in 1936 he was forced to resign his position and lee Germany because of his Jewish background. Karl Hans Wedepohl was painfully aware of this injustice, and he always saw Goldschmidt, not only as his predecessor in this academic post but also as his inspiration, and he believed it was his responsibility to ensure that Goldschmidt’s fate was not forgotten. 10. “The Chemical Composition Including the Rare Earth Elements of the Three Major Glass Types of Europe and the Orient Used in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages” (with Klaus Simon and Andreas Kronz), Geochemistry, v. 71, no. 3, 2011, pp. 289–296. 11. “Glas in Haithabu” (with A. Kronz, V. Hilberg, and K. Simon), Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, v. 43, 2015 (2016), pp. 39–58. 12. For a full list of publications by Karl Hans Wedepohl, see www.uni-geochem.gwdg.de/en/publications-en (accessed February 28, 2017). 457