Two millennia ago, delicate glass vessels that potentially served as containers for wine, water, exotic fragrances in ancient Rome, shattered and met their untimely demise. They found their way into...
A joint mission organized by underwater archaeologists from Italy and France was recently deployed to the site of the Capo Corso 2 shipwreck, which was first spotted in 2012 and is located at a depth...
Němčice in the Czech Republic was a seemingly inconspicuous place with a remarkable history. Now it holds the proud distinction of being the earliest and oldest glass workshop north of the Alps!...
One of the most fascinating crafts in the art world is the practice of glassblowing. Glassblowing is the art of creating beautiful pieces of glassware by blowing air into semi-molten glass through a...
The Nimrud lens is a 3,000-year-old piece of rock crystal unearthed by Sir John Layard in 1850 at the Assyrian palace of Nimrud, in modern-day Iraq. Since its discovery over a century ago, scientists...
Today, glass is a mundane material mostly used in construction but in history it was among the treasures of kings and their royal dynasties. The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3,600...
The oldest known stained-glass windows in the world are traditionally associated with the late 11th century Augsburg Cathedral in Bavaria, Germany. Now, researchers from University College London (...
For several decades, a team of researchers have been carrying out excavations at old cemeteries and villages at sites in central Mali and eastern Senegal. Over the years they’ve come across a handful...
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius is perhaps the best-known natural disaster in the ancient world. It preserved whole towns and human remains, which have all been priceless from an archaeological point...
Many of the Roman elite enjoyed notoriously luxurious lifestyles. For example, Senators and nobles liked to drink from transparent glasses which were of the highest quality. The origin of the best...
Archaeologists digging at an ancient Pictish hillfort, near Dunkeld in Scotland , prove it was an important power center for an elite class. The 7th to 9th century King's Seat Hillfort, “ the Fort Of...
The mystery of the origin of an unusual piece of glass has been solved in Britain. It has been established that it belonged to a very rare fish-shaped bottle, that came all the way from the Black Sea...
Victorians are often remembered for their obsession with death and mourning. It is not too surprising to discover that they had specific practices and even special objects created to further enhance...
The palace-city of Samarra, capital of the former Abbasid Caliphate, was home to an advanced industry of glass production and trade, according to a study published August 22, 2018 in the open-access...
In today’s society, glass is a material that is easily available. Due to mass production, glass objects are considered common and can be found everywhere. In the ancient world, however, glass-making...
Imagine a glass you can bend and then watch it return to its original form. A glass that you drop but it doesn’t break. Stories say that an ancient Roman glassmaker had the technology to create a...
A surprising and secluded chapel – with glittering mosaics on every surface creating a fairytale quality – lies hidden in verdant, wooded hills in St. Andrew, a parish on the island of Guernsey, a...
A newly found treasure trove of more than 10,000 colorful glass beads and evidence of glassmaking tools, makes scientists think that an ancient city in southwestern Nigeria was one of the first...
Archaeologists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) started excavations in September 2016 at Khirbat al-Minya, an early-Islamic caliphate palace on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel...
A newly discovered glass workshop reveals that Israel was an important center for glass production in Roman times. During excavations prior to a road construction in the Carmel Mountains a team of...
Throughout history, some artists, craftsmen and chefs have carefully protected and concealed knowledge about their processes or recipes. One such art was glass-blowing in Venice, where the process...
A group of researchers have discovered that the chemical composition of a fragment of glass found 50 years ago at a shrine in Kyoto, Japan closely resembles that of glass found in the ruins of a...
By Tara MacIsaac , Epoch Times We’ve lost the secret to making some of history’s most useful inventions, and for all of our ingenuity and discoveries, our ancestors of thousands of years ago are...
Scientists working in Denmark have unearthed glass blue beads crafted in an ancient Egyptian workshop for King Tutankhamun that made its way north to Europe 3,400 years ago. The find helps prove...