The early days of ceramic lead-glazing in the Mediterranean: Unravelling technological practices in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy
Résumé
The acme of the production of lead-glazed pottery in the Ancient Mediterranean is commonly seen as a result of the Roman conquest of Cilicia in the mid-1st century B.C. In this regard, this type of glaze is often regarded as one of the many technological innovations that took place in a context of increased interactions between the Hellenistic and the Roman worlds. Nevertheless, the exact conditions that fostered this technological development – that is, the use of lead oxide to produce a pottery glaze – remain unclear. Based on the SEM-EDS analysis of the microstructure and bulk chemical composition of the fabrics and glazes, this research aims at reconstructing the successive steps of the experimentation and diffusion of pottery lead-glazing between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. We present the results obtained from 48 vessels attributed to the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. The vessels were sampled at Athens, Mytilene and Ostia, and we identified them petrographically as originating from industries in Asia Minor, Mainland Greece, and the area of Rome. This research builds on previous archaeological and archaeometric research on this type of ware. Our SEM-EDS analysis indicates that the earliest, and also easternmost, lead glazes among our sample set are from Lesbos; they display technological differences with the (essentially later, and westerner) glazes from Attica, Corinthia and Rome. Indeed, Lesbian glazes were applied onto a non-calcareous fabric; they were produced by mixing lead oxide with clay, instead of using a quartz-rich sand (as identified elsewhere); they were coloured using iron oxide. In relation with a strong continuity of technological practice in the selection and use of clays identified among Lesbian mouldmade pottery since at least the 3rd century BC, it appears that lead-glaze pottery production in Lesbos may have started in a Hellenistic context rather than under a Roman impulse. Other compositional resemblances were highlighted with Seleucid, and even far-eastern Asian productions. The situation is different for mainland Greek workshops: the selection and treatment of the clays differ from the practices recorded for the local black-glazed Megarian bowls; the lead glaze production and colouring techniques (using copper oxide) seem to reproduce a potentially Roman standard that we also identified in the area of Rome. Therefore, these indsutries may have started after the Roman conquest, in a different sociocultural and economical context.
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