Roman and Late Antique Glass in the Mediterranean Area and Serbia: Its Production, Compositional Types and Provenance

Abstract

The paper gives a synthesis of Roman glass production, compositional types and provenance of Roman soda-lime-silica glass (natron glass) during the Roman and Late Antiquity epochs. It briefly discusses a small production of plant-ash glass, which appears among the Serbian glass finds. The paper describes the production process and components used in glass production and the two-phase production model of Roman glass. It presents the main compositional features of the most typical Roman glasses during the first three centuries CE: Roman blue-green glass, naturally colourless glass, and antimony-decolourised glass. It also describes new glass types that appeared during the 4th century: Roman manganese-decolourised glass, HIMT, Foy série 3.2, Jalame, and Roman Sb+Mn. It then gives characteristics of the most-represented glass-type of the 6th century, the Foy série 2.1 and its subtypes with elevated concentrations of iron.The paper discusses the provenances of the mentioned types and the methods used for their determination: circumstantial evidence, major and minor element concentrations, and isotopic ratios and rare earth patterns. There is also a discussion on the types of glass from Serbia, giving a brief sketch of its evolution in time and contextualising it within finds reported from the wider Mediterranean area. It shows that the distribution of particular glass types in Serbia generally reflects the distribution in the wider area. The important exception to this is Foy 3.2, which seems to be more present in Serbian assemblages, started to appear earlier (3rd century) and lasted longer (6th century) than in the Western Mediterranean.