Isotope analysis of English forest glass from the Weald and Staffordshire
Abstract
Glass is one of several early modern industries where the development from small-scale workshop to large-scale industry offers a valuable insight into wider socio-economic trends. Previously, medieval and early modern forest (wood ash) glass has been studied using a range of analytical techniques. However, characterisations of production centres and exchange systems for forest glasses are difficult to verify, in part because very few examples of raw glass from furnace sites have been investigated. Compositional analysis can provide evidence for the raw materials used and can sometimes provide compositional groupings specific to sites. However, strontium and neodymium isotope determinations can actually provenance the glass by linking the geological ages, or sources, of raw materials to production sites. Using
- This article is part of the themed collection: Archaeometry