1966.68

Jar

Purchased. Ht 9.7cm; diam. 9.6cm.

Intact; there is some slight corrosion of the surface. Clear blown glass jar with rounded bowl and everted rim, rolled in. The base is indented.

Early blown glass is not usually clear, but slightly green, as in 1968.01, in this catalogue. The transparency was achieved by the addition of manganese, a development which probably took place in the early second century BC. Glass was rare until the first century AD but became increasingly widely used under the Roman empire, even for simple household containers like this.

Close to form 67a in Isings, Roman Glass from Dated Finds 86-87. Perhaps second century AD. Compare also D. Whitehouse, Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, i (Corning NY, 1997) no. 389 which he takes as a mug or measure (modiolus), together with good discussion and parallels. This form is not known in the Eastern Mediterranean, where jars are either more rounded or else have a higher shoulder and tend to have cracked-off rims; nor is it found in Italian collections. A second–third-century date is possible.

Folio Fine Art Ltd (London), Catalogue 40 (September 1966) no. 187 (ill.); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 114.