Glass from Islamic Sicily: typology and composition from an urban and a rural site

Résumé 0

As part of the Sicily in Transition and GlassRoutes projects glass artefacts from various medieval Sicilian sites have been analysed by LA-ICP-MS. This made it possible to collect data on the circulation of glass on the island in the Middle Ages. The comparison of the data from the coastal town of Mazara with those from the rural area of Castronovo di Sicilia allowed us to establish a continuity in the supply of fresh Levantine glass to the island as late as the end of the 7th century. The results also point to a possible role of urban centres in the redistribution of goods to the hinterland in the 8th century. During this period, the Castronovo area was supplied by imports of fresh glass from the Levant and Egypt, from regions that were part of the Umayyad caliphate. The 10th- to 11th-century glass assemblages from both sites shows a considerable Islamisation of Sicilian material culture, with typologies reminiscent of what is known from Egypt, Ifrīqiya and the Iberian Peninsula. The discovery of a compositional group at both Mazara and Castronovo, which differs from published data from other areas of the Mediterranean basin, also suggests a Sicilian origin of these objects. Islamisation is thus also evident in the adoption of production technologies typical of the Islamic world, such as the use of soda-rich plant ash as a fluxing agent.