Glass cremation urn
Made in one of the western provinces of the Roman Empire, about
AD 50-200
This glass vessel still contains cremated bones and a fragment
of woven asbestos: the use of asbestos for shrouds is mentioned by
the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (AD 23/4-79). Like many other
examples the urn must have been found in a cemetery. However,
before its funerary use it probably had a domestic purpose and is
likely to have served as a storage jar in the home. Many vessels of
this type have M-shaped handles, though other versions have no
handles at all. Such urns were in common use throughout Italy,
North Africa and the western provinces of the Roman Empire, such as
Gaul (modern France) and the Rhineland, from about AD 50-200.
Tripoli in Libya is the most eastern find-spot for this type of
vessel so far recorded.
The urn is made of natural bluish-green glass. Glass consists of
a mixture of soda, silica and lime. In Roman times soda for making
glass came from naturally-occurring natron; silica came from sand
that probably contained the third necessary ingredient, lime. Iron
is present in most sand and, if nothing is added to the mixture,
the resulting glass is nearly always a bluish-green colour, like
this vessel. It seems likely that glass was made from raw materials
in only a few places in the Roman period. The glass was distributed
from these centres to glasshouses throughout the Roman Empire to be
formed into vessels and other items. Roman glasshouses also used
cullet (pieces of broken glass) that could be re-melted, either to
form new items or to be added to other molten glass. The Romans
used 'natural' glass for much of their everyday blown glass.
H. Tait (ed.), Five thousand years of glass-1, 2nd paperback edition (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)
P.F.H. D'Hancarville, Antiquités Etrusques, Grecques, vol. II (Naples, 1778)
P.F.H. D'Hancarville, Antiquités Etrusques, Grecqu-2, vol. 1 (, 1766)
I. Jenkins and K. Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes: Sir Willi (London, The British Museum Press, 1996)