Katharina Schmidt has written a much-needed volume on Iron Age glass from the Near East. Although a considerable amount has been published about Late Bronze Age glass in the region—a lot less research has been carried out on Near Eastern Iron Age glass. It is a well-balanced book in which the author has considered the archaeological, technological, archaeometric and epigraphic evidence for Iron Age glass and glass production. Wisely, she has also considered Late Bronze Age evidence for comparison.
Schmidt has provided an excellent description of Near Eastern Iron age glass artefacts, including a detailed discussion of the archaeological sites and the reliability and quality of the contexts in which they have been found. She not only describes bowls, jars, alabastra, inlays (including in statues), tiles and mace heads, but also glass ingots of various shapes, ‘raw’ glass fragments and waste material, with excellent plates for some (not referred to in the text).
The long discussion of the production techniques for these objects is very helpful. Usefully, she has also included a valuable consideration of glazed ceramic vessels from the Near East (excluding Turkey) as part of a quite wide-ranging discussion of how different materials were used to make similarly shaped vessels (glass, faience, glazed ceramics). This is partly based on the groundbreaking research published by the late Eddy Peltenburg (Reference Peltenburg, Bimson and Freestone1987) who mainly focused on Late Bronze Age materials. Schmidt then discusses the thorny but all-important question of what the glass vessels were actually used for. This is not an area that is commonly discussed by glass experts, partly because the sources of evidence (typological, historical, scientific and archaeological) rarely produce a clear answer. The author then reviews the occurrence and chronology of the different glass objects and the relationship between site types and object types. Intriguingly, during this period of social and economic change, there is evidence for the continuity, from the Late Bronze Age into the Iron Age, of core- and rod-formed vessels such as those from Hasanlu, Iran. Cast and cut glass first appear in the tenth to ninth centuries BC.
There is a good discussion of the raw materials used by glassmakers in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (inferred from the results of chemical analyses), including the primary raw materials, colourants and opacifiers for making plant-ash glass, the apparently dominant glass type. Cobalt oxide, the key colourant, was clearly used to produce the ritually and socially important deep blue colour in glass. We cannot be absolutely sure in what form the cobalt was added, however. It may have been a small piece of ‘black’ glass in which an excessive amount of cobalt was dissolved, or a purified cobalt-rich mineral. Cobalt minerals occur in association with other minerals such as copper, iron and nickel, so we can sometimes suggest which mineralogical source might have been exploited.
Secure evidence for the fusion of glass from primary raw materials (primary production) is rare and often difficult to prove. Such is the case for Iron Age glass in the Near East. Nevertheless, unlike in many other periods, the evidence for glass production has been described in detail in a series of cuneiform texts that were found in the palace of Ashurbanipal (668–661 BC) in Nineveh, Iraq, with other fragments, including earlier ones, from Hattusha and Babylon. Katharina Schmidt's reconsideration of the texts is impressive. She provides a detailed critical discussion of the extent to which the texts can actually provide evidence for primary glass production, and she makes a very convincing case that they do. Moorey, in his impressive Reference Moorey1994 book Ancient Mesopotamian materials and industries: the archaeological evidence, was not convinced that they did describe glass making but more probably faience. Even though the texts were written by scribes, there is detailed technological evidence that shows a clear understanding of the processes of glass production. Examples are the need to use a clean crucible so as to avoid contamination of vitreous slag from previous use and a detailed description of the need to use Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica) without knots, free of bark and cut in the month of Abu (August) as fuel. It is no coincidence that they were cut in late summer: this would also have been the time when halophytic plants used for making plant-ash glass were harvested because they reached their greatest biomass then. The text describes the use of crushed quartz pebbles and plant ash to make glass. A detailed description of how to prepare glass batches from raw materials is provided and descriptions of the associated ritual procedures are rare and invaluable.
Schmidt's review of Iron Age glass compositions uses published material, much of which considers the many chemical compositions of Late Bronze Age, Mesopotamian and Egyptian glass. There is evidence for technological continuity, but also some distinctive glass compositions from Hasanlu, Iran, providing evidence of innovation during a period of social and economic transition.
There are a few omissions and aspects that could be improved upon: ingots, raw glass and waste material are referred to as ‘primary products’, but these cannot be regarded a result of primary production. All could be the result of glass working (secondary production), especially waste products. Discussion of relative levels of magnesia and potassium oxide, both impurities associated with the fluxes, do not match the plotted points in fig. 7.7. A rather more nuanced discussion of the unusual and important Hasanlu compositions and of possible examples of natron glass would have been useful.
Overall, this is a major contribution to the study of Iron Age glass that will be of great help to students of ancient technologies and glass for years to come.
