Posted on 10/04/2010 6:50:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Romans weren't just dab hands at making beautiful vessels, ornaments and plates from glass; they were also good at recycling the stuff. A new study has found that towards the end of their rule in Britain, the Romans were recycling vast amounts of glass. But the researchers behind the study think this probably had less to do with their concern for the environment, and more to do with the fact that glass became scarcer in the northern fringes of the Roman Empire during the last century of their rule.
Glassmaking was a highly sophisticated and successful industry during Roman times. Not only did the Romans spend over 600 years making things out of glass; they also knew exactly how to colour or decolourise it... the Romans already knew how to make colourless glass. If you add tiny amounts of a so-called decolouriser like antimony or manganese to the sand, it'll come out of the furnace nearly clear...
Glass produced throughout the Roman world has a relatively uniform composition, suggesting it might have been made in a few small centres, and was shipped across the whole Empire before being reworked into different shapes in regional centres where necessary... In an attempt to understand how colourless glass was made and distributed during the mid-third to fourth centuries, Foster and co-author Dr Caroline Jackson from the University of Sheffield decided to analyse the chemical composition of 128 samples of glass from 19 sites across Britain.
(Excerpt) Read more at planetearth.nerc.ac.uk ...
|
· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe · |
|||
Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only? |
|
||
|
· Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword · |
|||
Natural Law v. Positive Law.
Scarcity creates value, liberals destroy value.
Cost effective.
recycled glass is called cullett, and all good glass makers use it...
They also gargled urine to whiten their teeth.
Gotta draw the line somewhere.
And many glass blowers since then.
I would give that collection a good home. I want it!
have you ever been to the Corning Museum of Glass? It’s great!
No, I haven’t. However, I have grandchildren living in NY, and we’ll put it on our list of places to visit the next time we’re out there. Thanks for the reminder.
Now that I have a Garmin, I might even be able to find it!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
