Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#2> Price eventually found it matched a restored fish-shaped bottle in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in New York.
This is a really interesting place, I definitely recommend visiting it.
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#3> Price eventually found it matched a restored fish-shaped bottle in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. This is a really interesting place, I definitely recommend visiting it.
I enjoy their YouTube channel from time to time where they have glassmaking demonstrations and more. Interesting stuff, imho.
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#4Doesn'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 away.
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#5Doesn'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 agree, it's not like people couldn't travel around, and it would be beneficial for traders to do so
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#6There’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 - Bulgaria has great, completely empty, museums - this was one of many where the surprised attendant unlocked the place so we could go in.
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#7Doesn'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 agree, it's not like people couldn't travel around, and it would be beneficial for traders to do so
Yep and we have a couple of surviving books from those days regarding traveling.
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#8Doesn'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 them in anatolia, some trader picks them up a crate of them from a market in constantinople, sells them at a markup in italy, an aristocrat gives one to his wife, and then then gets appointed governor in Gaul, etc..
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#9There’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?
Re: Mystery of Chedworth's 1,800-year-old Roman glass shard solved
#10Doesn'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…
Yeah trading, looting, however it moves if it is of some value I expect it would move around eventually just by changing hands.
How direct or complex trade networks may be can be up for debate, but humans will be handing things off one way or another for sure.