ISA 2012 Leuven (Day 4 – Ceramics, Glazes, Vitreous Materials and Glass 1)

I’m currently at the 39th International Symposium on Archaeometry in Leuven, Belgium,
where I have a poster to present. I’ll be writing a proper conference
review when I return, but in the mean time I’ll be making informal
collections of the tweets and discussing the conference here on a daily
basis. There are also collections from Monday (Stone, Plaster, Pigments, Chronologies), Tuesday (Metals and Metallurgical Ceramics) and Wednesday (Biomaterials and Bioarchaeology).

An innovation this year was the ISA Gazette, a daily publication with news on the coming day’s lectures, events and an interview with an established researcher. It was well received and I hope to see it again next conference.

The ceramics sessions, which have had their own day in the past, were spread out over two days with sessions on both Thursday and Friday. The Glass sessions were also spread over the two days, which lead to a bit of a disjointed feel to the days.

The first session of the day was Ceramics 1, convened by Josefina Perez-Arantegui.

Christina was talking about using strontium as a disambiguation element, and whilst I don’t know that much about strontium isotopic studies, it’s been clear over this ISA 2012 and 2010 that isotopic analysis is a big deal in archaeometry at the moment.

Anno was trying to build up a body of evidence on the breakage qualities of pottery in order to comment on archaeological evidence of damage to amphora, presumably to try and discuss how any were broken in transit, storage, etc.

After coffee break we returned for a five paper session on Glazed Ceraics and Vitreous Materials convened by Yona Waksan.

The conclusions of this paper were particularly interesting as it was suggested that both blue wares utilised cobalt colourants which may have originated from the same Qamsar village in Asia.

Mike’s work suggested that the area which provided soda for these glazes was located near a borate deposit.

In tis paper Marino talked about the establishment of a faience factory and how analysis of the wares supported the idea that the director of the factory was far more experienced with painting and glazes than with production of the actual pottery.

After lunch there was an hour-long poster session. Unfortunately there was not much room in the space assigned for posters and things were a little cramped, making it difficult to get round and see the large numbers of posters on display.

There were two posters using QR codes allowing people to download copies of their posters. Whilst I have mixed feelings about QR codes themselves, it was great to be able to download the poster and read it somewhere quiet away from the buzz of the hall. A few people remarked on twitter of the value of being able to read the poster and interact with the conference despite being hundreds of miles away. If you’re happy to share your work, it’s definately worth making your poster downloadable – whether using a normal web link or QR code.

I was most interested in the posters detailing experimental archaeology, of which there were a number.

An hour goes by very quickly when trying to battle queues and find time to talk to people. There were no calls made to indicate the start of the next session though, so people often turned up late to the first session after the posters and coffee breaks.

#Exparch6 refers to the 6th Experimental Archaeology Conference UK, a conference series which runs annually in January and encompasses all experimental archaeological work, from scientific work like Esme’s to experiential and replication work.

The post-lunch session was Glass 1, convened by Michael Tite. This included ancient faiences.

Katherine presented a paper for which Marc Walton was first author (hence the confusion), which challenged some of the current established thought on the trade in cobalt colourants during the Late Bronze Age. Cobalt is important because it gives a very deep, attractive blue colour in glasses, glazes and enamels which cannot be replicated by other colourants.

The idea of glass, tiles and faience emulating precious stones is an established concept in the study of ancient material, though difficult to generate hard evidence for.

Dieter and his colleagues presented a number of analyses of beach sands around the northern Mediterranean, which may help narrowing down the centre(s) of Roman period glassmaking. There were also a number of posters on related work from other members of this research group.

It is generally accepted that Roman period glass production took place in one/a few really large production centres, and Monica’s work on the Nd isotopic ratios supported this idea.

After coffee break we returned to ceramics, with the Ceramics 2 session convened by Marino Maggetti.

Yona argued that the decorative elements that typologies are often built on are actually less important for grouping and discussing the archaeological meaning of these pieces in distinguishing ceramics than the evidence for where they were made, what they were made of and what period they were made in.

The Conference Dinner was absolutely fantastic. It was held in what I believe was the old academic faculty club for Leuven University, a beautiful set of halls which had recently been decorated to a very high level. The evening began with canapes and drinks in the gardens before sitting inside for a three course meal that included some excellent food and wine. I think everyone was quite impressed with the standard of the dinner, and we were really glad we had chosen to go.

After the dinner we all moved back to the centre of town to enjoy a long night of celebrations which continued long into the small hours of Friday!