Ancient Glass Beads

Strings of colorful glass beads were a popular commodity traded throughout ancient Nubia in the earlier half of the first millennium AD. Combining macroscopic examination with laboratory analyses (LA-ICP-MS), the author breaks new ground in Nubian studies, establishing diagnostic markers for a study of trading markets and broader economic trends in Meroitic and post-Meroitic Nubia. Archaeometric results, lucidly presented and discussed, identify the origins of the glass from which the beads under investigation were made. The demonstrated South Indian/Sri Lankan provenance of some of the ready-made beads from Nubian burial contexts and a reconstruction of their distribution patterns in Northeast Africa is the first undisputed proof of contacts between Nubia and the Red Sea coast. Reaching beyond that, it shows Nubia’s involvement in the Asian maritime trade, whether directly or indirectly, during a period of intensive interchanges between the 4th and 6th centuries AD.

Museum August Kestner (Hannover / Germany) owns a highly important Egyptian object made of blue, yellow and white glass: a fragment of a statuette representing the Egyptian goddess Taweret (Thoeris), inv. no. 2616, previously in the collection of August Kestner (1777-1853). Together with two monkey-figurines excavated in Greece (acropolis of Mycenae and lower citadel of Tiryns), all three fragments bear a cartouche with the name of Pharaoh Amenhotep II (Dynasty 18, 1425-1400 BC). This fact makes them the humankind's oldest dated sculptures from the material glass. Taweret is usually represented as a figure consisting of three animals: hippopotamus body standing upright on its rear legs, the paws are those of a lion, back and tail a crocodile. Allthough thousands of statuettes showing Taweret in the described feature have been preserved, the glass statuette in Hannover is absolutely unique, because it is the only known example which combines the three animals within the head: hippopotamus ears, lion nose and crocodile teeth. Samples of the glass were taken and analyzed (chapter by Rainer Werthmann, pp. 37-44). Further, other glass objects bearing royal names of early Dynasty 18, belonging to the earliest attestations for glass in Egypt, are presented and discussed in this contribution.

Deutsch: Im Rahmen des Projektes Ancient Mining and Metallurgy in West Central Iran hat das Deutsche Bergbau-Museum in Zusammenarbeit mit den iranischen Institutionen das vorgeschichtliche Kupferabbaugebiet von Veshnaveh in Zentraliran untersucht. Dabei wurde in einer der Gruben für den Bergbau gänzlich untypische Funde entdeckt. Zu Tage kamen Keramikgefäße, Holzobjekte, Textilfragmente, Nahrungsreste und Schmuckartefakte aus Glas - v.a. Glasperlen -  Halbedelstein, Gold und anderen Metallen. Offenbar wurde das ehemalige Bergwerk über einen Zeitraum von etwa 1400 Jahren (von ca. 800 v. Chr. bis  8. Jh. n. Chr.) als ein Naturheiligtum genutzt.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den Kleinfunden dieser Grabung sowie der Deponierungspraxis und stellt für die Problematik der vorislamischen Religion in Iran, aber auch für das weltweit verbreitete Phänomen der Höhlenheiligtümer einen wichtigen Aspekt dar, auch kann sie einen wichtigen Beitrag in der Parther- und Sasanidenforschung leisten.

English: Within the programme „Ancient Mining and Metallurgy in West Central Iran“ the German Mining Museum examined prehistoric copper mines in the central mountains of Iran. The archaeological area is located between the cities of Ghom and Kashan, near the village of Veshnaveh, about 150 km South of Teheran. In five excavation and survey campaigns during the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2005 the region was examined, while in 2003 small finds of the first three seasons were documented and processed at the Mirasfarhangi-je Ghom (Archaeological Insitute in Ghom). The intention of the archaeologists was to investigate the regional prehistoric copper supply, the technique that was used to extract the metal from the rock and how the copper was traded. Several mines were accessible in the mining district of Laghe Morad, Mazrayeh and Chale Ghar and they were systematically examined and documented. The utilisation phase of the whole mining area obviously lay between the early 3rd and late 2nd millennium BC.

However, much later non-mining activity was proved by revealing finds in two of the mines: In the mine called Ghale Ghar 1, the archaeologists unexpectedly came across an ensemble of objects that were obviously not related to the mining activity at all. That happened in the year 2001, during one of the first excavation campaigns. In mine 1, thousands of finds were found: ceramic vessels and sherds, wood and wooden vessels, remains of nuts, shell and baked goods, animal bones, one textile fragment, jewellery such as glass and stone beads and pendants, metal finger rings and ear rings, as well as one glass vessel and sheets of decorated metal.

Based on comparative studies and a stratigraphical analysis, this research study gives an outline of the chronology of the small finds that were excavated in the mines Chale Ghar 1 and 2. Most objects could be dated to Arsacid and Sasanian periods. An interpretation of the popular belief and the religious meaning of the site is on of the central points in the study.

Recent archaeological excavations at the seventh-to tenth-century CE sites of Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani on Zanzibar Island have produced large numbers of glass beads that shed new light on the island's early interactions with the wider Indian Ocean world. A selected sample of the beads recovered was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the origins of the glass used to make the beads and potential trade relationships are considered. The data show that two major glass types can be identified: mineral-soda glass, m-Na-Al, produced in Sri Lanka (and possibly South India) and plant ash soda glass. The latter comprises three subtypes: two with low alumina concentrations and different quantities of lime (here designated v-Na-Ca subtypes A and B) and one with high alumina (designated v-Na-Al). The v-Na-Ca subtype A beads are chemically similar to Sasanian type 1 glass as well as Zhizo beads found in southern Africa, while v-Na-Ca sub-type B compares reasonably well with glasses from Syria and

This study presents the results of an archaeometrical investigation performed on 75 black glass beads dated to the ninth–fifth century BC coming from Bologna, Cumae, and Pozzuoli (Italy), and Chotin (Slovakia). The analyses of the major, minor, and trace elements—as well as that of Sr and Nd isotopes performed on a selection of samples coming from Bologna—provided evidence for two different production technologies in Iron Age black glass found in Italy (natron glass, probably produced in Egypt) and Slovakia (wood ash glass, probably produced in Europe). In both cases, the glasses derive their black colouration from the high presence of iron (around 12 % FeO), introduced into the glass batches through the intentional choice of dark sands. The production model appears to be small-scale and experimental, characterised by the use of non-sorted raw materials and poorly defined formu-lae, producing glass with a high chemical variability. The wood ash technology appears to have dropped out of use in Europe until the Medieval period, while natron production spread quickly, becoming predominant throughout the Mediterranean.

An ancient bead is a document from the past—a message in a bottle—written in some lost symbolic language. Archaeologists try to understand that language by integrating scientific and technological approaches with the social, economic, political, and symbolic/ religious context in which the bead was found. As an example, we use Korean National Treasure 634 (NT634), a dark blue glass bead adorned with mosaic decorations of a bird, a flowering tree, and a human face, found in a 5th-6th century Korean tomb. This bead suggests its meaning by how and where it was made, and what its images may represent.

An assemblage of glassy materials from Culduthel, an Iron Age site in Northeast Scotland, mainly comprises fragments and beads of just a few millimetres in size and is unique in the region. The glasses were analysed by scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray analysis. Opaque red glass comprises mainly droplets and fragments, is typical of the late Iron Age and may have been used to manufacture inlay in copper alloy metalwork recovered from the site.  Compositional characteristics of the red suggest that it was derived from a single block or ingot.  Opaque yellow occurs mainly as beads and antimony- and lesser amounts of tin-opacified glass are present.  Evidence for the melting of antimony-opacified yellow glass occurs in a composite fragment of opaque red, yellow and colourless glass and may reflect the manufacture of beads.  Blue glass is less abundant and more variable in composition, it is likely to have been acquired over a longer period. The base glass for the majority of samples is the high-lime high-alumina manganese-decolourised variety, typical of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods and originating in the Levant.  The absence of low-lime, low-alumina antimony-decolourised Roman glass from the assemblage indicates an original date of manufacture before the middle of the first century CE.

Between 18 October and 13 November 2014, excavations were undertaken in the Main City South at Amarna. The team consisted of Anna Hodgkinson (field director), Susan Kelly, Ashley Bryant, and Kimberley Watt, and inspector from the Ministry of State for Antiquities, Mohamed Khalil. The work was funded by grants from the G.A. Wainwright Fund, the Corning Museum of Glass (Rakow Grant), the Association for the History of Glass and the Thames Valley Ancient Egypt Society.

This communication aims to present the information concerning the identification of furniture and know-how originally from eastern Mediterranean in Corsica through Middle Bronze Age (1600-1200 b.C.) and Late Bronze Age (1200-800 b.C.).
In this island, the question of the presence of Aegean elements was, for a long time, associated to a theory involving a foreign-born population, the Sherden, a group mentioned within the famous Sea Peoples. After the abandonment of these historic-factual constructions, the insular archaeological research attached itself to the analysis of the sociocultural character of insular groups from the Bronze Age, without trying to connect them to the cultural dynamics from eastern Mediterranean.
After three decades of scientific introspection, it seems important to propose a postponed inventory on this specific issue. The issue of relations between the Aegean and Near-Eastern areas is documented today by several discoveries, revisions on objects and specific analysis made for fifteen years. In the early 2000s, the first formal testimony of the eastern importation recognized in Corsica is a copper ingot of ox-hide typology and Cypriot origin, found out of context in Sant’Anastasia, in the northeast area of the island. This object, published by F. Lo Schiavo, illustrates the integration at least marginal of Corsica into the Mediterranean networks of metal distribution in the late second millennium. This discovery thereby came to partially fulfill an important gap in research, particularly illustrated by the strong contrast expressed by the number of remains of this type between Corsica and Sardinia. At the same time, the realization of analysis (laser ablation coupled to mass spectrometry) on vitreous furniture unearthed during ancient excavations of the sites of Foce, Tiresa and Filitosa permitted to set the context of production, revealing the near-eastern origin of the materials. 
More recently, the discovery of a set of ornaments in connection in a sepulchral context of the late Middle Bronze at the site of Campu Stefanu (southwest) allowed obtaining of one of the largest repositories for this type of production throughout the western Mediterranean. This necklace is composed by 25 blue-glass beads of Near-Eastern origin, even Egyptian, and of 29 Baltic amber beads of Aegean typology, which show, in addition, a perfect physical, chemical and morphological superposition with isolated beads from contemporary sepulchral contexts of Sardinia. In this context, the formal non-recognition of Helladic crockery in Corsica, while several cases are known and published in Nuragic area, seems to be explained by a delay in research.
Besides these direct testimonies betraying the importation of exotic prestige goods in Corsica between the fourteenth and the twelfth centuries, recent achievements illustrate the existence of technical transfers between the island and the Mycenaean world around the middle and late second millennium. These phenomena are notably materialized by the strong technical and iconographic analogies observed during repoussé work in metal foils. The matrices recognized in Corsica present indeed profound occurrences with those individualized in Greece, as well as the finished objects to which they are attached. Unlike importing exotica and bullion, repoussé metalwork is not known in Sardinia and peninsular Italy during those times, thereby introducing a direct transfer of know-how between these two territories.
Through these few examples, of which we sense a short-term enrichment, we’ll try to measure and explain the integration of different types of remains within the native society, in order to draw the position of the island amongst the networks between the two basins of the Mediterranean.