Provenance of Glass
Director: Julian Henderson with Dr Alan Baker (University of Melbourne), Catherine Longford (University of Sheffield), Prof. Tony Sagona (University of Melbourne), Dr. C. Sagona (University of Melbourne), Prof Helene Sader (American University in Beirut), Prof. Dr. Youssef Barkoudah (University of Damascus), Dr. Amr al-Azm (University of Damascus), Dr. Joan Oates (University of Cambridge), Dr. Chris Doherty (University of Oxford), Proff. Melanie Leng (British Geological Survey, UK), Dr. Jane Evans (British Geological Survey, UK), Dr. Dave Polya (University of Manchester), Proff. Dr. David Briggs (The University of Nottingham), Chloe Duckworth (AHRC student, The University of Nottingham)
Funded by: the British Academy, National Enviromental Research Council and The University of Nottingham.
Summary
This project involves using archaeological and scientific techniques to attempt to show for the first time where the glass was made and how the technology developed, especially for plant ash glass in the Islamic world. The project focuses on a new means of provenancing glass through the determination of the isotopic (Sr, Nd, O, Pb) characteristics of Middle Eastern Halophytic plants and the glass made from them. Other research involving collaboration with botanists in the Universities of Melbourne and Damascus, has led to the chemical analysis of the plants used, and the ethnographic studies of the related industries of soap and glass production.
Salsola vermiculata in flower. Such plants were ashed and used to make Bronze Age and Islamic plant ash glass- and to make the first hard soap.
Opaque decorated core-formed vessel fragments for 18th Dynasty Tell el Amarna, Egypt (courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).
Image gallery
Publications
Tradition and experiment in 1st millennium AD glass production - the emergence of Early Islamic Glass technology in late antiquity, Accounts of Chemical Research, 35, 2002, 594-602.
Localized production or trade? Advances in the study of cobalt blue and Islamic glasses in the Levant and Europe, in (ed. L. van Zelst) Patterns and Process a Festschrift in honor of Dr. Edward V. Sayre, Smithsonia Center for Materials Research and Education, Washington, D.C.,2003, 227-247.
Glass trade and chemical analysis: a possible model for Islamic glass production, in (eds. D Foy and M-D Nenna 'changes et commerce du verre dans le monde antique, Montagnac, 2003, 109-123.
Rutten, MJ Roe, Henderson, J. and Briggs, D Surface analysis of ancient glass artefacts with ToF-SIMS: A novel tool for provenancing? Applied Surface Science 252, 2006, 7124-7127.
Henderson, J., Evans, J.A., Sloane, H.J. Leng, M.J. and Doherty, C. The use of oxygen, strontium and lead isotopes to provenance ancient glasses in the Middle East, Journal of Archaeological Science 32, 2005, 665-673.
Nikita, K. and Henderson, J. 'Glass analyses from Mycenaean Thebes and Elateia: compositional evidence for a Mycenaean glass industry', the Journal of Glass Studies 48, 2006, 71-120.
In press The provenance of archaeological plant ash glasses, Festschrift for Professor Michael Tite, Oxbow Books, 2008
Accepted J. Henderson, J. Evans and Y. Barkoudah, The roots of provenance: glass, plants and isotopes in the Islamic Middle East, Antiquity.