Chloë N. Duckworth

Recipes and experimentation? The transmission of glassmaking techniques in Medieval Iberia

ABSTRACT This paper explores the potential of a combined historical and archaeological approach to the study of glass production in the Iberian Peninsula in the Late Middle Ages. The historical study of technical recipes compiled during the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period and the compositional analysis of archaeological material offer different, but equally valuable, insights into glass production. The methodologies, potential and limitations of these techniques are summarised, and their combined use explored, with reference to a fifteenth-century letter written by one Cristóforo de Soto Mayor, its experimental reconstruction, and the comparison of these results with real archaeological datasets.

Time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry examination ofancient and historical opaque glasses

This paper presents recent work done on the application of Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToFSIMS), a high lateral resolution surface analysis technique, to the study of opacifying inclusions in ancient and historical glasses. A small selection of ancient glass samples have thus far been analyzed by this technique with great success. The combination of surface sensitivity and high lateral resolution offered by the technique is uniquely placed to address the detailed chemical composition of the opacifying inclusions themselves, without interference from the surrounding glass matrix. The research team seeks to further develop the use of ToF-SIMS for addressing issues of provenance and understanding the technological processes involved in adding opacifying inclusions to ancient glass, through further analysis of relevant material and through the production and analysis of replica opaque glasses. The technique itself will be discussed along with some of the preliminary results obtained and proposals for future work in this field.