Reconstruction of Manufacturing Patterns through Elemental and Isotopic Characterization of Raw Materials

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With funding from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Laure Dussubieux of The Field Museum, Shinu Abraham of Saint Lawrence University, and Thomas Fenn of California State Polytechnic University-Pomona, will undertake interdisciplinary research to understand ancient trade and exchange in South Asia and around the Indian Ocean as well as the relationship of that trade to the development of social complexity in the region. Political and ecological changes as well as other factors have an influence on the exchange networks connecting different communities. The different industries around the Indian Ocean, which fueled the trade conducted in this region and beyond, had to adapt in terms of their location and the nature and volume of their production, to shifts in the networks connecting the different actors of the trade. Through the study of the local glass industry, researchers will study how such an industry responded to changes in trade patterns around the region from around the mid-first millennium BCE to the late Medieval Period. At a time when India is witnessing the collapse of its traditional glass industry in favor of a more automated and less labor-intensive alternative, this project will provide new information about the roots of an activity on the brink of extinction and will provide new insights regarding the consequences of changing industrial landscapes in the modern world. This project integrates research and training of undergraduate and graduate students in interdisciplinary research. Results of this study will inform future exhibits and education activities at the Field Museum which educate hundreds of thousands of K-12 children and more than a million of visitors annually. This collaborative effort will include the collection of potential raw materials used for glass manufacturing based on the geological nature of the soils and the archaeological or ethnographical evidence of glass manufacturing in the area. Elemental and isotopic composition of the raw material will be determined and compared to data collected for ancient glass. Assuming that each center of glass production would procure raw materials from a nearby source, the diversity of the geology of India provides the possibility of characterizing each production center with a unique elemental and isotopic signature that will be identical in the raw materials and the finished glass.