Lead Isotopes in Some Ancient Egyptian Objects

The use of oxygen, strontium and lead isotopes to provenance ancient glasses in the Middle East

“…However, as can be seen, the four natron glasses fail to form a coherent group; the plant-ash glasses mainly form into a correlated cluster, with the raw glass samples occupying extreme positions. Work by Brill and collaborators [1,5,7] has provided lead isotope data for glasses of a range of archaeological contexts. A group of results from ten Islamic vessel fragments on the Serc¸e Limini shipwreck dated to c. 1025 [1, Table 1.1], including four lead-silica glasses, shows that six fall within the results for plant ash samples with the remainder being distinct (Fig.…”

Opacifiers in Late Bronze Age glasses: the use of ToF-SIMS to identify raw ingredients and production techniques

“…Extensive analysis using conventional archaeometric techniques has established lead and calcium antimonate as the primary causes of colour and opacity in these glasses (Turner and Rooksby, 1959;Brill et al, 1974;Henderson, 2001; 477) but their ultimate provenance is less apparent. Calcium antimonate (Ca 2 Sb 2 O 7 and CaSb 2 O 6 ) does not occur naturally as a mineral, but as noted by Turner and Rooksby (1959), Sb will react with the calcium already present in a glass to form crystallites.…”

Comments Ii

“…Lead isotope analysis on the Egyptian lead antimonate glasses was first carried out by Lilyquist, Brill and Wypyski (Lilyquist and Brill 1993), concentrating on the earliest, pre-Malkata glasses. Ore data has been provided by a number of authors (Brill et al 1974;Stos-Gale and Gale 1981;Castel et al 1988;Lilyquist and Brill 1993). To these ore data has been added data derived from the LIA of kohls (galena-based eye paints: Brill et al 1974) and four yellow glazes and six yellow glasses from Amarna -not all glazes, as implied by Mass et al 2002, 79-80).…”

“…Ore data has been provided by a number of authors (Brill et al 1974;Stos-Gale and Gale 1981;Castel et al 1988;Lilyquist and Brill 1993). To these ore data has been added data derived from the LIA of kohls (galena-based eye paints: Brill et al 1974) and four yellow glazes and six yellow glasses from Amarna -not all glazes, as implied by Mass et al 2002, 79-80). All of this work has shown that Egyptian glasses can be divided by LIA into two groups.…”