Sarah Paynter

Historic England · Archaeological Conservation and Technology

Glass beads from two maritime sites were analyzed: the Dutch East India Company vessel Rooswijk, wrecked in 1740 on Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast, UK, and an unidentified vessel known as the Bead Wreck, located off Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, in the Channel Islands. Both vessels were carrying drawn, lead glass beads, which are found mainly in 17...

A total of seventeen annular transparent blue glass beads and one cylindrical glass bead with opaque grey-white decoration were found at a site near Stotfold, in Bedfordshire, England. The beads were part of a cremation burial (without an urn), associated with small fragments of gold sheet and bone, and the latter were carbon dated to 1303-1052 cal...

Compositional analysis has proved to be a powerful tool for investigating the recycling of transparent glass in the Roman and Byzantine periods. This paper expands the focus further, to explore the recycling of coloured and opaque glass in the Late Iron Age and Roman periods in Britain. A review of the findings to date, predominantly for beads and...

Glass bangles are found in southern England and Wales from the mid-first century AD and become common in the north of England and southern Scotland in the late first century, before their numbers decline a century later. British bangles develop at a time of change, as Roman glassmaking practices were introduced across large areas of Britain. This s...

Even at the edge of the Roman Empire, in Roman Britain, substantial quantities of vessel and window glass were consumed. The glass itself was not made in Britain, but imported to Britain as raw glass chunks, some as cullet, and fully formed objects. This paper will examine the nature of glass working at three workshops dating from the second to fou...

This article provides a glimpse at the fascinating array of objects found in the wreck of the second-rate ship "London" which exploded int he Thames of Southend-on-Sea on 7th March 1665. The results of the investigations over the last decade will be published in a Cotswold Archaeology Monograph envisaged for 2021.

Provides practical guidance on how to investigate sites where pottery production has taken place. It describes how to anticipate and locate pottery production sites, the types of evidence that may be found, advice on the available methods and strategies for examining, recording and sampling features and finds of various types at each stage of the w...

Five ditched enclosures and a number of burials, dating to between the 1 st century BC and the 1 st century AD, were discovered at Stanway, near Colchester. Well preserved copper alloy and glass artefacts, and iron objects including two currency bars, were recovered from the site. Some copper alloy objects, including vessels and brooches, and glass...

This paper discusses the development of Roman antimony decolourised natron glass, its dominance, and subsequent decline, using new trace element data for colourless glass found in Britain. Experimental glasses are used to investigate the influence of different proportions of raw materials (particularly the ratio of natron to calcium carbonate) on t...

Pliny the Elder describes the discovery of a process for making natron glass, which was widely used for much of the first millennium bc and ad. His account of glassmaking with natron has since been corroborated by analyses of archaeological glass and the discovery of large-scale glass production sites where natron glass was made and then exported....

This paper discusses the development of Roman antimony decolourised natron glass, its dominance, and subsequent decline, using new trace element data for colourless glass found in Britain. Experimental glasses are used to investigate the influence of different proportions of raw materials (particularly the ratio of natron to calcium carbonate) on t...

Amber natron glasses were produced from at least the Hellenistic period and continued to be produced into the early second century CE. However, as with other strong colours used for Roman vessel production, this colour gradually declined in popularity as colourless and blue-green glass came to dominate. Whilst the colouring mechanisms for blue-gree...

A survey of selected metal statues was carried out to determine the nature of the metal, as well as any coatings applied to them in the past or more recently, to inform future conservation work. Portable XRF (X-ray fluorescence) was used to confirm the existing identifications of zinc and ‘bronze’ metals given in the curatorial report (Hunter 2015)...

The suitability of glass for re-melting and recycling was widely exploited in the past. This paper reviews the evidence, particularly for the 1st millennium AD, using examples from Western Europe. For much of this period glass was produced on a large-scale at a relatively small number of specialised glassmaking sites, which supplied numerous disper...

http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1RT8x15SlTUSsn A collection of tesserae and two fragments from rounded cakes of coloured glass, probably dating to the 2nd century AD, were found at West Clacton Reservoir, Essex, in the UK, by Colchester Archaeological Trust. A selection of the finds were analysed using SEM-EDS and ICP-MS. This paper provides data on...

One hundred and ninety three glass fragments from the canabae in York were analysed (first to fourth centuries). They fall into six compositional groups: antimony colourless (Sb), high-manganese (high-Mn), low-manganese (low-Mn), mixed antimony and manganese (Sb–Mn), high iron, manganese and titanium (HIMT) and plant ash. Some groups represent prod...

This paper describes the scientific investigation of the raw materials, iron products, slags and slag inclusions from a bloomery smelting and bloom forging experiment. The smelt used a high alumina sideritic ore, a clay-built shaft furnace and a blowing rate of around 200 litres per minute. The smelting slag produced was viscous and frothy, most si...

An archaeological research excavation was conducted in the area immediately surrounding an upstanding glassmaking furnace near Shinrone, Co. Offaly, Ireland. It dates to the early to mid 17th century and was built and operated by French Huguenots, probably de Hennezells (de Hennezel/Henzeys/Hensie) who had settled in this region as part of the Crow...

Archaeological excavation on the site of a seventeenth-century coal-fired glasshouse at Vauxhall, London, recovered a quantity of opaque, light purple to pale blue/green material. Although the material itself was highly crystalline, the bulk composition matched samples of the transparent, pale-green glass made at the glasshouse, confirming that it...

This paper explores the origin of dichroism and/or opalescence in vitreous waste materials from some glassworking sites. Similar properties have been noted and investigated in some other archaeological materials, such as Chinese glazes and the Lycurgus Cup, but the dichroism/opalescence of the materials reported here appears to occurred accidentall...

Analysis of glassworking waste from the site of the 14th-century glasshouse at Blunden's Wood, Surrey, UK.

Analysis of Iron Age crucibles used for bronze casting.

The Nene Valley, in eastern central England, was a major pottery production centre in the Roman period. Many kiln sites have been identified in the Lower Nene Valley region and, although comparatively less is known about production in the Upper Nene Valley, substantial amounts of mortaria and other coarse wares have been recovered during excavation...

The systematic application of scientific techniques to questions relating to industries of the post-medieval and industrial periods is a recent phenomenon. The focus of this chapter is on using materials science to answer archaeological questions. Some commonly used analytical techniques are briefly described, and case studies are used to demonstra...

This article describes various types of waste produced in experiments conducted by Mark Taylor and David Hill, using replica Roman glassworking furnaces. The material produced is compared with archeological glassworking waste, with the aim of facilitating the interpretation of the latter. The results emphasized the importance of taking into account...

Forty samples of Roman colourless glass tableware from Binchester, dating from the 1st to mid-3rd centuries AD, were analysed using ICP spectrometry and parallels were sought with similar studies of Roman glass from Colchester and Lincoln [C. Mortimer, M.J. Baxter, Analysis of Samples of Colourless Roman Vessel Glass from Lincoln, Ancient Monuments...

This study highlights regional variation in the composition of iron-smelting slag produced in England prior to the medieval period and attempts to link slag composition to the type of ore smelted. For many sites, the slag compositions were consistent with the use of limonite ore, but there is evidence that siderite ore was smelted at sites in Susse...

This document is a response to the increasing pace of redevelopment of urban industrial ('brownfield') sites in recent years. The archaeological recording of such sites is now, however, increasingly accommodated through the planning process owing to a greater awareness of the importance of Britain's industrial heritage. https://www.english-heritag...

An upstanding 17th century wood-fired glass furnace survives at Shinrone, County Offaly, Ireland. Two seasons of excavation have been carried out at the glasshouse by Caimin O'Brien and Jean Farrelly, and samples of glass working waste and products were recovered. Glass working waste recovered as surface finds from the site of another glasshouse, c...

Previous research has established that Iznik pottery differs from other Islamic stonepaste pottery in that its stonepaste bodies contain lead oxide as well as soda and lime, and that a significant proportion of the tin oxide in its glaze is present in solution rather than as tin oxide particles. In order to better understand these distinguishing fe...

Two sherds of decorated medieval pottery from Wood Quay, Dublin, were analysed by XRF spectrometry. The pigments were identified as vermilion or cinnabar, orpiment (and possibly realgar), carbon, calcium carbonate, haematite and a white lead compound. The pigments are typical of materials used in painting and manuscript illustration rather than pot...

ICP analysis was used to determine the origins of second century mortaria recovered from the Roman settlement at Stanwick. The mortaria were thought to have been produced in either the Upper or Lower Nene valley, in Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire, or Mancetter / Hartshill, in Warwickshire. Some coarseware fabric types identified amongst the St...

Slag from the smelting of silver-rich lead ore, produced in the 16th / 17th centuries, was recovered by Trevor Dunkerley during excavations in Combe Martin, North Devon. Samples of slag from 19th century smelting in the village were also obtained for comparison. The slag was examined and analysed using scanning electron microscopy and energy disper...

As part of a multidisciplinary programme of research on Islamic glazed pottery, the development of polychrome decoration during the 12th century AD has been investigated by examining polished sections through glazed pottery in an analytical scanning electron microscope. The two main decorative techniques used were underglaze and overglaze painting....

In the Near East and Egypt, vitreous materials in the form of glazed stones and faience were first produced from about the 4th millennium B.C. Subsequently, the period around 1500 BC saw major developments in the range of vitreous materials with the production of glass vessels and glazed clay objects and an extension in the range of colorants used....

These Guidelines aim to improve the retrieval of information about all aspects of metalworking from archaeological investigations. They are written mainly for curators and contractors within archaeology in the UK and will help them to produce project briefs, project designs, assessments and reports.

Supervisor: Professor Mike Tite. Thesis (D. Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 565-581).

Analysis of pottery production waste from the 17th-century Pickleherring pottery kiln, London.