Recent Advances in the Scientific Research on Ancient Glass and Glaze

Fuxi Gan, Qinghui Li, Julian Henderson

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9789814630306
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Spectroscopy & Spectrum Analysis

The aim of the book is to report the recent research development of ancient glass and glazing technology and the historical–cultural exchange of the East and West along the Silk and Steppe Roads. The contents of this book are dedicated to promote the exchanges between researchers in both social and scientific fields.

The scope of this book includes the new archaeological findings of ancient glass and faience in the world, the relationship of glassmaking with glazing technology, the development and application of modern techniques used for the characterization of ancient glass and glaze, compound colorants/opacifiers among ancient glass, the early exchanges of culture and techniques used between China and elsewhere along the Silk and Steppe Roads, and so on.

The aim of the book is to report the recent research development of ancient glass and glazing technology and the historical–cultural exchange of the East and West along the Silk and Steppe Roads. The contents of this book are dedicated to promote the exchanges between researchers in both social and scientific fields.

The scope of this book includes the new archaeological findings of ancient glass and faience in the world, the relationship of glassmaking with glazing technology, the development and application of modern techniques used for the characterization of ancient glass and glaze, compound colorants/opacifiers among ancient glass, the early exchanges of culture and techniques used between China and elsewhere along the Silk and Steppe Roads, and so on.

Readership: Student and professional.
Key Features:

• This book presents the recent research results through interdisciplinary collaboration in the field of ancient glass and glaze
• The contributors from different countries are all the active researchers in relative fields
• The carefully presented details of this book will be of great value to the understanding of the role of ancient glass and glaze in the development of human civilizations

The Ancient Glass Road: The Cultural and Technical Exchange of Chinese Glass and Faience with Outside China before the Han Dynasty (200 B.C.)

Fuxi Gan^*,†

^* Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
^† Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China

1.1 Introduction

The commonly discussed Silk Road has become synonymous with the main artery connecting Asia with Europe for economic, political, cultural and technological exchanges in ancient times. Zhangqian’s travels to the Western Region (~200 B.C.) was a magnificent undertaking. It greatly promoted the economic, cultural and technological exchanges between the four powerful empires at that time — the Hellenistic/Roman Empires in the West, the Han Dynasty in the East, the Kushan Empire in South Asia and the Hellenistic Empire in Central Asia. Therefore, the Silk Road was first recognised owing to Zhangqian’s travels to the Western Regions (200 B.C.–200 A.D.). More physical evidence and related literary records related will be discussed below.^[1,2]

There are other descriptions of contacts between ancient peoples in China and the outside world dating to before the Silk Road in ancient Chinese legends such as “King Mu travelled to West in Zhou Dynasty” (1500 B.C.). From this, one may conceive faintly that there had been a road linking the Eurasian steppe with China along which ancient people could travel. Some people called this the Northern Steppe Road or the Steppe Silk Road.^[3] However, the literary records about Proto-history are few, and written characters had not yet appeared during the Neolithic age. To understand the culture of proto-historic times, we have to depend on archaeological studies. Through field excavation, cultural relics, scientific analysis of archaeological materials, and comparisons in a worldwide context; we can investigate their origins and development, find the traces of the exchanges between China and the outside world, and gain some inspiration.

1.2 Ancient Chinese faience and its origin

Glazed quartz, named faience in the West, appeared c. 3500–3000 BC (the middle Neolithic age). Sintered quartz sand contains a small amount of glass so it is not real glass. Faience pre-dated glass and dates to the same period painted pottery appeared in China. Chinese faience has been found in Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan provinces along the Yellow River valley, Hubei and Jiangsu provinces along the Yangtze River valley, dating from the Early Western Zhou Dynasty to the Early Warring States Period (1046–400 B.C.). Chinese faience used quartz sand as its main raw material (SiO₂ > 90%) as in western faience. The fluxing agent used in Chinese faience was plant ash, in which the content of K₂O is higher than that of Na₂O.^[4–6] In Egypt, natron was used as the fluxing agent. Recent measurements show that some Chinese faience samples contain higher Na₂O levels relative to K₂O.^[7]

The faience of the early Western Zhou Dynasty has also been unearthed at Ejinaqi in north-western Inner Mongolia.^[4] This indicates that the early faience in China might come from the west, but most of it was made in China. Table 1.1 lists the chemical composition of glazed tubes and beads found in Pingdingshan and Xichuan in Henan Province.^[8–10] In the Early Western Zhou, only few faience beads, most of which were fragments, have been found. More faience beads and tubes have been found in middle Western Zhou contexts.

Table 1.1 PIXE analytical results of the faience artifacts dated to the Zhou Dynasties unearthed from the Pingdingshan and Xichuan, Henan Province (wt.%)

n.d.: not detected.

Fig. 1.1 Faience beads excavated from the cemetery of Ying State in Pingdingshan dated from the early to middle Western Zhou. (a) HNWKII-92, the “Liaozhu”of the Early Western Zhou; (b) HNWKII-69~72, the “Liaozhu”of the Middle Western Zhou; (c) HNWKIII-78, the “Liaoguan”of the Middle Western Zhou

Fig. 1.2 A set of jade pendants of the late Western Zhou excavated from the cemetery of Ying State in Pingdingshan. The green tubes indicated by red arrows are faience tubes

Figures 1.1 and 1.2 show the green faience beads of the Early and Middle Western Zhou and an assemblage of faience with a jade pendant of the Late Western Zhou excavated from the cemetery of Ying State in Pingdingshan. By the late Western Zhou, frit artefacts appeared, in which there was a higher proportion of glass. The appearance of Chinese ‘frit’ occurred about 1000 years later than that in Western Asia.

1.3 Ancient Chinese glass and the cultural and technical exchange between China and the outside — The Ancient Glass Road

Glass making in western Asia and Egypt started from 2500 B.C., the same time as bronze making in China. The earliest glass artefacts from China were found in Baicheng and Tacheng in Xinjiang. The earliest glass artefact in inner China (in the areas of the Yellow River and Yangtze River valleys) dates to the early Warring States Period.

A great number of glass beads were unearthed from Kiziltur Cemetery, Baicheng in Xinjiang. These monochromatic glass beads date to the Spring and Autumn periods (1000–800 B.C.). Their chemical compositions closely resemble that of the ancient glass beads found in Mesopotamia, belonging to the soda lime silicate glass family (Na₂O-CaO-SiO₂) (Table 1.2).^[11,12] However, some very different yellow glasses contain elevated levels of PbO and Sb₂O₃ in (e.g. XJ-2B, XJ-2C) . The high PbO and Sb₂O₃ contents are thought to be related to the presence of lead antimonite (Pb₂Sb₂O₇), a kind of colourant/opacifier in yellow glass. The antimony-based colourant/ opacifiers — for example, Pb₂Sb₂O₇ or CaSb₂O₆ — are found in some beads of plant-ash type soda-lime glasses dated to about 1000–500 BC in Xinjiang.^[12] It has been reported that lead antimonate yellow was used in Egyptian faience and glass artefacts as early as the XVIII^th Dynasty (c. 1567–1320 B.C.) and lasted until the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–713 B.C.), including some from El-Amarna and Malkata.^[13,14] To our knowledge, no antimony-based opacifiers were identified among the native PbO–BaO–SiO₂, PbO–SiO₂ and K₂O– CaO–SiO₂ glasses in central China from the 5th century B.C. to the 17th century A.D. The number of tombs in Kiziltur cemetery from which glasses were unearthed constitutes about 25 percent of the total tombs in this cemetery. These Kiziltur tombs belong to people below the noble class, which indicates that glass was relatively popular at that time.

A number of inlaid so called ‘eye beads’ were unearthed from the Xujialing Tomb in Xichuan (Fig. 1.3a),^[15] Jiuxian village in Ye county (Fig. 1.3b) and Luoyang i...