Understanding Bronze Age Faience in Britain and Ireland
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Understanding Bronze Age Faience in Britain and Ireland Alison Sheridan1, Katherine Eremin2 and Andrew Shortland3 1 Department of Archaeology, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh EH1 1JF, Scotland, United Kingdom; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; 3Research Laboratory for Archaeology & the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QJ, United Kingdom ABSTRACT Around 350 Bronze Age faience beads and pendants are known from Britain and Ireland, mostly from burials of cremated human bone. Their relationship with Near Eastern and Mediterranean faience has long been debated. A National Museums of Scotland (NMS) led international research project is investigating their origin, composition, manufacture and use (inter alia) for a Corpus of faience from Britain, Ireland and adjacent parts of mainland Europe. Non-destructive controlled-pressure scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive microanalysis (CP-SEM-EDS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and binocular microscopy provide compositional and textural information without sampling or coating. Wavelength-dispersive electron microprobe (EMP) analysis of rare polished samples provides additional and more accurate compositional information. The results demonstrate that direct derivation from Egyptian or Mediterranean faience traditions can be ruled out. The beads and pendants were manufactured on a small-scale basis, using mostly a mixed alkali paste and glaze from plant ash sources (including seaweed) and a copper-based glaze colorant probably derived from bronze. Tin (or its oxide) seems to have been deliberately added. Various forming and glazing techniques were used. We have demonstrated, for the first time, that some beads were worn during cremation; and we have further investigated the effects of cremation on faience by experimentally cremating a pig wearing a newly-made faience necklace. INTRODUCTION Interest in British and Irish Bronze Age faience dates back to 1812, when it was first suggested – based on morphological similarity between British segmented beads and those from 18th Dynasty Egypt – that faience could have been imported from Egypt. Debate over its origin has continued ever since, with local manufacture being suggested from as early as 1906, and with compositional analysis being used to shed light on the question from 1936. Semi-quantitative spectrographic analysis in 1956, and the use of neutron activation analysis and XRF analysis during the 1970s, revealed compositional differences between British and Irish beads and those from central and south-eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Near East, although interpretations differed and the hypothesis of ‘introduction by Egyptian or Mediterranean traders around 1400 BC’ proved hard to shift in some quarters. Relatively little new analysis was undertaken between 1975 and the 1990s, but the discovery of a 25-bead faience necklace at Findhorn, north-east Scotland, in 1988 [1] – the largest single find of British and Irish faience to date – spurred the principal au
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