The glass bead game: archaeometric evidence for the existence of an Etruscan glass industry

Abstract

Glass historians have long posited the existence of an Etruscan glass industry on the basis of artefact forms distributed within the Etruscan koine. Principally this has been the core-formed glass vessels known as stachelflaschen, whose distinctive decoration is unique to Etruscan contexts. Given an apparent independent European Bronze Age glass industry, with the most comprehensive archaeological evidence for it in Northern Italy, the possibility of an independent Etruscan industry also seems possible. The first chemical analyses of several stachelflaschen, a leech-shaped brooch slider and some, less diagnostic, Etruscan glass beads fromBritish collections are discussed here. The technology embedded in the chemistry of these artefacts suggests that a diagnostic Etruscan glass technology was used to make beads rather than the ornate vessels. Reference is made to the compositional results of glass from the cemetery of Magdaleska Gora in Slovenia. I N T R OD U C T I ON As part of a broader study of ancient glass from Italian contexts from ca. 1200 – ca. 200 BC, eighteen samples of “Etruscan” glass were chemically characterised using electron microprobe analysis. The samples were all taken from objects held in museum collections. Despite the poor provenance of a number of the artefacts, the forms include core-formedvessels andbrooch decoration previously attributed to Etruscan manufacture, along with less diagnostic beads. Previous arguments for the possible existence of an Etruscan glass industry have been strengthened by the demonstration of an earlier glass industry in Northern Italy (and elsewhere), using a distinct glassmaking technology (mixed alkali glass and glassy faience) defined by the analysis of material from the Final Bronze Age sites of Frattesina,Mariconda and Montagnana and middle bronze age and later (compositionally related) glassy faience and faience from Grotte Vittorio Vecchi and Vicofertile, Frabulino, Chiaromonte, and Poviglio. Given the sophisticated pyrotechnology of the Etruscan metal and ceramic

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