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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Early medieval secondary glass workshops in Northern France

Résumé

The recent discovery of a secondary glass workshop in front of the ancient abbey of Saint-Amand-les-Eaux (Nord, France) offers the opportunity to inventory and re-examine several structures in northern France. We will then examine the evidence of glassmaking from the 7th to 10th centuries. The study will first focus on the archaeological remains and their significance: raw glass, glassblowing waste, droplets, cullet, crucibles, furnaces, etc. We will try to replace them in each phase of the "chaîne opératoire" to determine the functioning, the organisation, the supply of raw materials and the production of the secondary glass workshops. The second objective is to consider the economic, social and political context of each occurrence in order to understand the possible links between the artisans and the religious or secular authorities. For example, monastic communities seem to have played an important role in the establishment of glass workshops in their area. What influence did they have on the type of workshops, the supply of raw materials, and the consumption of products? We will use archaeological remains as well as written sources and archaeometric data to provide some answers. We will also examine the connections between the glass workshops and the construction sites, including temporary structures. This overview of secondary glass workshops, dating to the end of the first millennium CE, allows us to understand the first steps of the transition that took place in the glass industry during this period. Indeed, several clues seem to point to the invention and adoption of new recipes. Among them, the increase in recycling of earlier glass probably means that imports of raw glass from the Near East were insufficient. This phenomenon led to the emergence of new trade networks to supply the workshops in cullet. We will then ask the question of the economic significance of such restructuring and its impact on glass production.
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Dates et versions

hal-03921980 , version 1 (04-01-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-03921980 , version 1

Citer

Inès Pactat, Bernard Gratuze. Early medieval secondary glass workshops in Northern France. Secondary glass productions in the early Middle Ages, University of Liège; Archeology and Science of Antiquity (ArScAn), CNRS / University of Nanterre; Archeomaterials Research Institute, Ernest- Babelon Center (IRAMAT-CEB) - CNRS / University of Orléans; LE STUDIUM Loire Valley Institute for Advanced Studies, Région Centre-Val de Loire, Jan 2023, Orléans (France), France. ⟨hal-03921980⟩
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