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This paper reports the compositional characterization of eighty-two glass fragments discovered in archaeological contexts at Tropaeum Traiani (Adamclisi, Constanţa county, Romania), most of them dated to the 4th–6th centuries AD, in an attempt to understand the glass consumption and circulation in the Lower Danube region during the Late Antique period. The analytical results were obtained using external Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and Particle Induced Gamma-ray Emission (PIGE) techniques at the New AGLAE accelerator located in the basement of the Louvre Palace, Paris, France. The chemical data were compared to those on coeval glass finds from the literature. The naturally colored Tropaeum Traiani glass fragments turned out to belong to Série 2.1 of Foy, Série 3.2 of Foy, HIMT (high iron manganese titanium), and HIT (high iron titanium) compositional groups of Late Antique glass. The lack of color in several fragments was obtained either through the use of antimony or manganese compounds; intermediate recipes for colorless vessels, indicative for recycling procedures, were evidenced as well. The sample set also included several naturally colored blue and green glasses dated to the Early Roman period which showed compositional patterns typical for Roman Imperial glass. The variety in the chemistry of the vitreous finds reported in this paper, demonstrated by the identification of different glass types previously encountered in contemporary objects from many archaeological sites from the Mediterranean Sea and Balkan Mountains regions during the Late Antique period, reflects the trade connections of the settlements from the Lower Danube and the Black Sea region with the rest of the Roman world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concentrations of Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Br, Sr, Zr, Sn, Sb and Pb in 40 archaeological glasses from the Early Byzantine Jelica site in Serbia, are determined by PIXE/PIGE. Geochemical and multivariate analysis shows it corresponds to Foy series 2.1 and 3.2. Regionally, it is similar to the contemporary 6th century composition from Lower Danube (Bulgaria), Caričin Grad (Serbia) and Butrint (Albania). The results indicate that trade routes between these inland regions and the rest of the Empire were mostly open even during turbulent times of the 6th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carthage played an important role in maritime exchange networks during the Roman and late antique periods. One hundred ten glass fragments dating to the third to sixth centuries CE from a secondary deposit at the Yasmina Necropolis in Carthage have been analysed by electron microprobe analysis (EPMA) to characterise the supply of glass to the city. Detailed bivariate and multivariate data analysis identified different primary glass groups and revealed evidence of extensive recycling. Roman mixed antimony and manganese glasses with MnO contents in excess of 250 ppm were clearly the product of recycling, while iron, potassium and phosphorus oxides were frequent contaminants. Primary glass sources were discriminated using TiO as a proxy for heavy minerals (ilmenite/spinel), AlO for feldspar and SiO for quartz in the glassmaking sands. It was thus possible to draw conclusions about the chronological and geographical attributions of the primary glass types. Throughout much of the period covered in this study, glassworkers in Carthage utilised glass from both Egyptian and Levantine sources. Based on their geochemical characteristics, we conclude that Roman antimony and Roman manganese glasses originated from Egypt and the Levant, respectively, and were more or less simultaneously worked at Carthage in the fourth century as attested by their mixed recycling (Roman Sb-Mn). In the later fourth and early fifth centuries, glasses from Egypt (HIMT) and the Levant (two Levantine I groups) continued to be imported to Carthage, although the Egyptian HIMT is less well represented at Yasmina than in many other late antique glass assemblages. In contrast, in the later fifth and sixth centuries, glass seems to have been almost exclusively sourced from Egypt in the form of a manganese-decolourised glass originally described and characterised by Foy and colleagues (2003). Hence, the Yasmina assemblage testifies to significant fluctuations in the supply of glass to Carthage that require further attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]