Nadine Schibille 

The flux of glass in Spain in the first millennium CE

This presentation traces the broad developments in the supply of glass and the emergence of a local glassmaking tradition in the Iberian Peninsula based on the analytical data generated during the ERC project GlassRoutes. No analytical or archaeological evidence has thus far come to light that would suggest primary production of glass prior to the Umayyad conquest in 711 CE. The supply of glass relied instead on imports from the Levant and Egypt, and from the late antique period onwards increasingly on the recycling of Roman and late antique natron-type glass. Egyptian HIMT glass dominates the archaeo-vitreous record of Spain in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Egyptian glass types remain dominant throughout the fifth and the first half of the sixth century. Visigothic glass assemblages in contrast consist overwhelmingly of Levantine glass, suggesting a geographical shift in the glass supply to the Iberian Peninsula.

The absolute number of glass finds decreases drastically from the eighth century. Our analytical data of Islamic glass now allow us to trace the beginnings of Islamic glassmaking in the Iberian Peninsula back to Cordoba to the second half of the eighth or first quarter of the ninth century CE. Specifically, the unique characteristics of the glass assemblage from Šaqunda, a suburb of Cordoba, point to an early (< 818 CE) and independent local development of lead glassmaking in Iberia. Soda-ash glass appears a little later in Spain. The exact timing of this transition in the fluxing agent is difficult to determine, but by the tenth century several types of soda ash glass were evidently in circulation. The development of local glassmaking in Iberia can thus be linked to geopolitical shifts and the processes of Islamisation.

Short Bio

Nadine Schibille is a senior research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Institut de Recherche sur les Archéomatériaux, Centre Ernest-Babelon (IRAMAT-CEB). She has a background in the history of art as well as in the technology and analysis of archaeological materials. She has just wrapped up an ERC-2014-CoG project entitled GlassRoutes (ID: 647315) that traces Mediterranean-wide developments in the production, trade and consumption of glass using analytical data.