Late Bronze Age glass furnace, beads found in Italy –

A Late Bronze Age glass furnace and thousands of brightly colored beads have been unearthed at the Fratesina site in northern Italy. Remains of clay furnaces, glassworking tools and glassware date back 3,000 years, making this the earliest known glassmaking site in Europe.

The earliest known glass dates back to around the 24th century BC and is believed to have originated in Syria. The first mass production of glass occurred during the reign of Amarna in Egypt.
Akhenaten, the pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1352-1336 BC). The ingredient in this ancient glass is soda water
Lime silica glass made from an alkali that may be plant ash. Plant ashes resulted in ancient glasses containing large amounts of potassium and magnesium oxides in their composition. Chemical analysis of second millennium BC glass from Mesopotamia and Mycenaean Greece had the same composition. Frattesina glass is different. It is low in soda, calcium oxide and magnesium oxide and high in potassium oxide. They must have used a different source of alkali.

The settlement of Fratesina was founded in the 12th century BC on the south bank of the Po River, about 25 miles from the Adriatic coast. This location made it a major commercial center on the land, river and sea trade routes linking trans-Alpine Europe with the Mediterranean. Rich archaeological material – imported goods (Alpine copper, Cornish tin, Baltic amber, North African ivory, ostrich eggshells), evidence of large-scale craft production (bronze casting, antler/bone products, ceramics, glass, made of various products made from materials) imported raw materials), remains of cultivated plants and domesticated animals – testify to the rich diversity of its economy. From its foundation to the early Iron Age (9th century BC), Fratesina received raw materials in trade, manufactured them into finished products, and exported them via long-distance trade routes to Central Europe, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. This was unusual for the period, when workshops operated on a smaller scale and specialized in producing goods for local consumption.

Interestingly, Fratesina’s business seems to be business. Houses where people lived, spun thread, made clothes, cooked, processed and preserved food. There are two cemeteries that had been in use for centuries, and the town itself was clearly planned, but it lacked the defensive walls that characterized the urban centers of its contemporaries in Greece, Etruria, and Italy, and the population was small. Other settlements in the area were much larger in population and area, although none had as many workshops manufacturing such a variety of products.

The remains of Fratesina were discovered in 1967, and the site has been excavated and investigated ever since. Evidence of glass processing was first published in 1983, and subsequent excavations uncovered more glass. In 2022, an archaeological mission from Rome’s La Sapienza University conducted new excavations in the Frattesina area, where evidence of glass production had previously been found.

[The excavation uncovered] Thousands of colored glass beads were presented together with other glass objects, testifying to the extraordinary production activities for both domestic and international markets. Compositional analysis shows that the production techniques differ from those used in the Eastern Mediterranean, thus demonstrating the ability of Fratesina craftsmen to adapt complex techniques in an original way. The excavations also revealed a furnace that was probably used for glass production, thus proving together with other finds (crucibles, glass ingots) the importance of this craft production. This glass production furnace is by far the oldest known in Europe.

In addition to excavations, geophysical surveys (a technique for obtaining information about the environment and distant objects through sensors) and remote sensing surveys conducted by Wieke de Neef of the University of Bamberg also clearly defined the shape and internal organization of the large village: Ver. The settlement of Ratesina spread over 25 hectares, occupying the right bank of the defunct Po di Adria tributary, and its organization consisted of neighborhoods originally defined by orthogonal canals. Within these blocks, hundreds of residential and production facilities are arranged in a very regular pattern, with equally regular orientations.