ANTONARAS, Anastassios C.

NASRALLAH, Laura ; BAKIRTZIS, Charalambos ; FRIESEN, Steven J.

From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonikē. Studies in Religion and Archaeology

Harvard Theological Studies 64

Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2010, p. 299-331

fouilles excavations in situ in situ

[201, 700]

amphoriscos amphoriscos bague ring bol bowl bouteille bottle bracelet bracelet fiole vial flacon flask gobelet beaker lampe lamp pendentif pendant perle bead pot jar tesselle tessera verre à boire drinking glass vitre window glass

abrasion abrasion doré gilded décoration appliquée applied decoration gravé engraved incisé incised picotement et étirement de la matière pinched decoration soufflé dans un moule mould-blown

• Glass objects from Thessalonikē: found almost exclusively in graves.
– Question with regard to the recycling of glass.

• Remains of the local glass working activity: 4th-6th centuries A.D. (fig. 1):
– in a building outside the eastern city walls,
– in the city’s abandoned public Forum,
– in the abandoned ruins of the Roman public bathhouse.

• Review of glass vessels:

– mid 2nd-3rd century A.D. (fig. 2) – produced both in the West and the East:
- tableware: mainly arybaloid jugs, biconical bottles;
- unguentaria: mainly pear-shaped flasks, jar-like unguentaria;
- spouted vessels: baby-feeders or lamp fillers;

– mid 3rd-4th century A.D. (fig. 3):
- tableware:
mainly pointed and flat-bottomed amforisks, large-sized jugs, spherical or pear-shaped bottles; bowls often bearing engraved or applied decoration;
produced both in the West and the East, but probably a large number of them were produced locally.
- unguentaria:
often miniature versions of tableware vessels, pear-shaped, squat or slender flasks; cubical and double-faced mold-blown;
originated in the West or even in the Balkans, a few appear to be of oriental origin.

– 4th-early 5th century A.D. (fig. 4-6) – mainly Syro-Palestinian production or imitation of Syro-Palestinian forms:
- tableware: jugs (octagonal jugs appears to be local products) and bottles; shallow and deeper bowls (some of them with mold-blown honeycomb pattern); conical beakers;
- unguentaria: mainly small amphorae, craters, and jugs, squat and spherical, pear-shaped, cylindrical, square bodied;
- lamps: handled hemispherical or calyx-shaped bowls.

– 5th-6th centuries A.D. (fig. 7-8):
- several forms of the 4th century tableware, such as jugs, bottles, and drinking vessels (stemmed beakers prevail), survieved;
- lamps: stemmed beakers of various forms, cylindrical vessels with a smaller or larger knob forming the base;
- some bowls and bottles bear engraved decorations (fig. 8):
probably mainly of Italian origin,
iconographical themas: pagan, Christian, geometrical,
some Greek isncriptions.

– Summary:
- almost exclusively free-blown, plain, undecorated vessels;
- few fully mold-blown or dip mold-blown objects;
- some examples of engraved decoration;
- small number of vessels bears applied decoration.

– Role of glass vessels in pagan and Christian burial customs.

– Question with regard to the price of glass vessels.

• Window panes:
– fragments of window panes from around the 4th century: muff-process or cylinder’s technique of production.

• Jewelry – late 3rd-6th centuries A.D. (fig. 12-13):

– Pendants:
- jars, juglets shapes, disks with stamped motifs, glass droplets.

– Beads:
- large-sized biconical or globular, dark-colored body decorated with white trails or specks; cylindrical, segmented, and patterned by the segmenting mold, gilded, or plain, spirally-ribbed pieces,
- other beads: smooth and ribbed globural, ovoid, prear-shaped, cylindrical, cubical, hexahedronlike, hexagonal, multifaceted; technics: winding, folding, molding, segmentation, drawing etc.
- eastern Mediterranean production.

– Bracelets:
- dark-colored: purple or dark green,
- section: circular, semicircular, and flat, band-like cross-section,
- technics: seamed, from drawn out canes of glass; seamless, made with the performation and centrifugal rotation of hot mass of glass,
- decoration: majority plain, few examples with pressed, geometrical motifs.

– Rings:
- glass ring gems: no decoration, lenticular, plano-convex, occasionally in the shape of pyramid.

– Enameled jewelry:
- some examples of glass enamel on golden earrings.

• Mosaics:
– examples from churches: the Rotunda, Acheiropoirtos, St. Demetrios, the Latomou monastery;
– tesserae cut on-site from large glass cakes: probably made with imported raw glass, possibly locally shaped, exception – gold-glass tesserae arrived on site either in cakes.

bloc de verre brut lump of raw glass déchets de verre glass waste

inscription inscription

habitat
settlement  contexte urbain
urban context lieux de pratiques religieuses
places of religious practices   église
church structures funéraires
burial structures  tombe
tomb production et commerce
production and commerce  atelier
workshop

Grèce Greece

Thessaloniki

consommation production