Archaeometry 47 (1)

Reports on a compositional study of 243 vessels, in which unexpected compositional differences have been found both between and within the four vessel types studied. The authors discuss the implications of these results in the context of different models that have been proposed for glass-making and glass-working in the Roman world. Includes

Modern potash glass of a manganese-free medieval composition was scratched, etched and immersed in an aqueous solution containing dissolved manganese. After several weeks, immersion samples were sectioned and examined by SEM-EDX. Manganese was shown to be present in fissures and cracks within the glass, where alkali had been depleted, demonstrating that manganese from an external source is capable of blackening buried medieval potash glass.

On the development of a new approach to subsurface exploration, based on fixed-frequency radio-wave illumination from a buried transmitter. Data are collected from a buried, continuous wave source with a phase-coherent surface-scanning receiver and recorded in a digital archive from which images of the archaeological features are subsequently produced. The paper reports the results of a feasibility assessment programme and discusses the future application of the method to real archaeological sites.