7 ms·

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

85 points by secondary 7y ago

mcphage 7y ago
> 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.
- martin_a 7y ago
  I enjoy their YouTube channel from time to time where they have glassmaking demonstrations and more. Interesting stuff, imho.
- mirimir 7y ago
  It would have been cool to include that image, rather than: > The trust commissioned the archaeological illustrator Maggie Foottit to produce an impression of how the complete fish bottle may have looked.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
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 away.
- Aardwolf 7y ago
  I agree, it's not like people couldn't travel around, and it would be beneficial for traders to do so
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Yep and we have a couple of surviving books from those days regarding traveling.
- empath75 7y ago
  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..
  - duxup 7y ago
    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.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    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.
    - fapjacks 7y ago
      There's basically zero chance that glass bottle belonged to anyone that wasn't super wealthy. Also, "middle level" "decision makers" were essentially all assigned to a specific legion, or e.g. veterans with land grants taking an administrative office. Id est mostly static individuals. Almost all travel within the Roman Empire was either military or trade. Or super wealthy people (and/or their entourage).
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  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?
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    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.
    - lawlessone 7y ago
      I imagine it was used to carry the captured souls of pedantic people.
      - fapjacks 7y ago
        Pedants.
madaxe_again 7y ago
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 - Bulgaria has great, completely empty, museums - this was one of many where the surprised attendant unlocked the place so we could go in.
- leashless 7y ago
  Garum is fish sauce, I think?
  - madaxe_again 7y ago
    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.
    - sorokod 7y ago
      Curious, why Worcestershire sauce and not any of the fishsouces you can buy in a chinese/Thai/Vietnamese grocery?
      - flyingfences 7y ago
        GP probably meant "closest" in terms of lineage, not just composition. There's more of a Western connection to Worcestershire.
      - fapjacks 7y ago
        In fact the Vietnamese fish sauces (which are made without adding any sugar or soy, and only made with anchovies and salt) are exactly like the garum and liquamen of ancient Rome.
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
fsloth 7y ago
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/ http://orbis.stanford.edu/ If only such analysis was available realtime for all current economic variables.
- jdsully 7y ago
  Apparently Firefox is not "modern" according to orbis. Very unfortunate how the web has become such a monoculture.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

85 points by secondary 7y ago

> 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.

martin_a 7y ago
I enjoy their YouTube channel from time to time where they have glassmaking demonstrations and more. Interesting stuff, imho.
mirimir 7y ago
It would have been cool to include that image, rather than: > The trust commissioned the archaeological illustrator Maggie Foottit to produce an impression of how the complete fish bottle may have looked.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

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 away.

Aardwolf 7y ago
I agree, it's not like people couldn't travel around, and it would be beneficial for traders to do so
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Yep and we have a couple of surviving books from those days regarding traveling.
empath75 7y ago
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..
- duxup 7y ago
  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.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  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.
  - fapjacks 7y ago
    There's basically zero chance that glass bottle belonged to anyone that wasn't super wealthy. Also, "middle level" "decision makers" were essentially all assigned to a specific legion, or e.g. veterans with land grants taking an administrative office. Id est mostly static individuals. Almost all travel within the Roman Empire was either military or trade. Or super wealthy people (and/or their entourage).
compiler-guy 7y ago
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?
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  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.
  - lawlessone 7y ago
    I imagine it was used to carry the captured souls of pedantic people.
    - fapjacks 7y ago
      Pedants.

madaxe_again 7y ago

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 - Bulgaria has great, completely empty, museums - this was one of many where the surprised attendant unlocked the place so we could go in.

leashless 7y ago
Garum is fish sauce, I think?
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  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.
  - sorokod 7y ago
    Curious, why Worcestershire sauce and not any of the fishsouces you can buy in a chinese/Thai/Vietnamese grocery?
    - flyingfences 7y ago
      GP probably meant "closest" in terms of lineage, not just composition. There's more of a Western connection to Worcestershire.
    - fapjacks 7y ago
      In fact the Vietnamese fish sauces (which are made without adding any sugar or soy, and only made with anchovies and salt) are exactly like the garum and liquamen of ancient Rome.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago

fsloth 7y ago

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/ http://orbis.stanford.edu/ If only such analysis was available realtime for all current economic variables.

jdsully 7y ago
Apparently Firefox is not "modern" according to orbis. Very unfortunate how the web has become such a monoculture.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]