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Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

theguardian.com

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Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#11

Post by ASlave2Gravity »

madaxe_again wrote: post #6

There’s also a bottle just like this (well, extremely similar Roman fish bottle) in the archaeological museum of Burgas, on the Bulgarian coast - I spent about 15 minutes looking at it having my mind blown by the craftsmanship - which would corroborate the Black Sea hypothesis. They however listed it as being a garum bottle, IIRC. I’m not surprised they ended up finding the only known example across the Atlantic - Bu…

The Natural History Museum in Sofia was pretty much empty this May! My partner and I had the whole place to ourselves. There's an absolutely incredible array of gems and stones, plenty of taxidermy--and I presume models--of all sorts of fauna, and lots of random bits and bobs dotted all around. Bulgaria is a wonderful place!

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#12

Post by benj111 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #6

There’s also a bottle just like this (well, extremely similar Roman fish bottle) in the archaeological museum of Burgas, on the Bulgarian coast - I spent about 15 minutes looking at it having my mind blown by the craftsmanship - which would corroborate the Black Sea hypothesis. They however listed it as being a garum bottle, IIRC. I’m not surprised they ended up finding the only known example across the Atlantic - Bu…

"across the Atlantic"

The UK is on your side of the Atlantic, unless you go the long way round of course.

Edit: I get it, they matched it to the New York example.

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#13

Post by madaxe_again »

leashless wrote: post #9
madaxe_again wrote: post #6

There’s also a bottle just like this (well, extremely similar Roman fish bottle) in the archaeological museum of Burgas, on the Bulgarian coast - I spent about 15 minutes looking at it having my mind blown by the craftsmanship - which would corroborate the Black Sea hypothesis. They however listed it as being a garum bottle, IIRC. I’m not surprised they ended up finding the only known example across the Atlantic - Bu…

Garum is fish sauce, I think?

Yeah - basically the ketchup of the day. Worcestershire sauce is apparently the closest extant thing, as it’s made in pretty much the same way - fermented anchovies.

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#14

Post by sorokod »

madaxe_again wrote: post #13
leashless wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garum is fish sauce, I think?

Yeah - basically the ketchup of the day. Worcestershire sauce is apparently the closest extant thing, as it’s made in pretty much the same way - fermented anchovies.

Curious, why Worcestershire sauce and not any of the fishsouces you can buy in a chinese/Thai/Vietnamese grocery?

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#15

Post by dsfyu404ed »

empath75 wrote: post #8
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

Doesn't seem very mysterious to me. If you're gonna find something from far away you're gonna find it in some place the kind of people who would travel from far away (i.e. high class people, this is antiquity we're talking about, Greyhound buses hadn't been invented yes) would be. The site they found it at is one of the most impressive villas in England, exactly the kind of place where you'd host some guest from far…

I would be surprised if a wealthy person had gone all the way to the black sea and back. If you think of trade as sort of just randomly shuffling objects between nodes on a graph, given enough objects and enough time, you should see some examples of everything from everywhere, without any single person taking any object all the way from a to z. I buy some perfume bottles at a port on the black sea, sell a bunch of th…

While I agree with your entropy model I think that for items like this there's more direct paths that are equally reasonable.

It stands to reason that the middle level important people who made strategic level decisions about things like military defenses, which roads to build up, etc, etc who's work was on the edge of the empire would move between the various points on its edge directly rather than traveling to/from Rome like a higher level person who reports to people in Rome would do. Some middle level political or military official probably bought the perfume around the same time they moved from the northeast to the northwest or had reason to travel there and brought it back as a souvenir or gift for their wife or something.

Sure, most rich people didn't travel or not that far but of those that did this is exactly the kind of place they'd wind up going to/from or passing through. The glass could have gotten there through a circuitous route as you described but I find it slightly more probable that it could have been transported there reasonably directly by its end user.

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#16

Post by fsloth »

Would the distance in question be close to the distance from Glevum to Chersonesos? Then the fastest route between them would take 60 days.

This "google map" of the roman world by Stanford is fantastic!

http://orbis.stanford.edu/

If only such analysis was available realtime for all current economic variables.

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#17

Post by flyingfences »

sorokod wrote: post #14
madaxe_again wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - basically the ketchup of the day. Worcestershire sauce is apparently the closest extant thing, as it’s made in pretty much the same way - fermented anchovies.

Curious, why Worcestershire sauce and not any of the fishsouces you can buy in a chinese/Thai/Vietnamese grocery?

GP probably meant "closest" in terms of lineage, not just composition. There's more of a Western connection to Worcestershire.

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#19

Post by compiler-guy »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

Doesn't seem very mysterious to me. If you're gonna find something from far away you're gonna find it in some place the kind of people who would travel from far away (i.e. high class people, this is antiquity we're talking about, Greyhound buses hadn't been invented yes) would be. The site they found it at is one of the most impressive villas in England, exactly the kind of place where you'd host some guest from far…

The archaeologists working on the dig thought it was a bit of a mystery and a special find. Not so much the fact that there was an unusual artifact, but where the unusual artifact may have come from.

The glass historian they contacted also thought it was a bit of a mystery and a special find.

What are your qualifications to say that they were wrong?

Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved

#20

Post by dsfyu404ed »

compiler-guy wrote: post #19
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

Doesn't seem very mysterious to me. If you're gonna find something from far away you're gonna find it in some place the kind of people who would travel from far away (i.e. high class people, this is antiquity we're talking about, Greyhound buses hadn't been invented yes) would be. The site they found it at is one of the most impressive villas in England, exactly the kind of place where you'd host some guest from far…

The archaeologists working on the dig thought it was a bit of a mystery and a special find. Not so much the fact that there was an unusual artifact, but where the unusual artifact may have come from. The glass historian they contacted also thought it was a bit of a mystery and a special find. What are your qualifications to say that they were wrong?

What's mysterious is what it was. Now that we know that it seems like there's several non-controversial paths for how it could have got where we found it.
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