Connecting Late Roman and Early Byzantium: Investigating the technological tradition of 6th c. AD glazed wares from Northern Greece and Bulgaria

Abstract

Glazed wares found in Thasos (Greece) and in a pottery workshop in Sofia (Bulgaria) in 6th c. AD contexts were investigated using WD-XRF (body analysis) and SEM-EDS (glaze analysis). In both cases, they associate low-calcareous bodies and high-lead glazes, with lead compounds probably applied without the addition of silica before a single firing. This technical tradition is common to the 4th−5th c. Late Roman glazed wares studied so far, from the Balkans to Northern Italy, and to the 7th c. AD “Byzantine Glazed White Ware I”. Our corpus may thus be seen as the “missing link” between the Late Roman and the Early Byzantine glazed wares, before glazed tableware meet with a remarkable development later on in Byzantium.