Preliminary Report on the 2001 Swiss-Liechtenstein excavations at ez Zantur
by Bernhard Kolb and Daniel Keller
VII. Ez Zantur IV: Glass tableware of the mid 4th century AD
Due to the sudden destruction of the house on EZ IV during the earthquake of 363 AD excellent archaeological contexts are preserved, as the debris of the collapsed walls sealed the finds underneath them. Therefore, those finds represent the household inventory used in the different rooms of the house just before its destruction. A contextual analysis of the glass tableware found in these rooms offers a closer look at the function and the status of glass tableware in the mid 4th century AD in Petra.
In this preliminary study, the glass finds from room 6 as well as from a small part of another room – the niche at the western end of corridor 11 – will be presented and compared to the glass tableware from the other rooms on EZ IV. To quantify these glass assemblages, the method of estimating the minimum number of vessels (EMN) is adopted, where a conservative estimate of the minimum number of different vessels in a assemblage is made by judging from the colour of the glass fragments and the preserved rim, body and base sherds found in the same room This method of quantifying glass assemblages is fully explained and discussed by Cool and Price 1995: 9–10. .
The glass finds from room 6 (FK 3051 and 3065) – already presented in an earlier preliminary report Kolb – Keller – Gerber 1998: 268–272 No. 1–7 Fig. 15. The third conical beaker made of colourless glass and preserved in a base sherd was omitted in this report by mistake. – consist of a shallow bowl and three conical beakers, each of them with cracked-off rim, decorated with wheel-cut lines (except one of the beakers) and made of good quality thick-walled colourless glass. Additionally there are two other conical beakers with fire-rounded rim and a concave base as well as a jug with funnel-shaped mouth and a folded flange below the rim and another closed form with a globular body and a concave base, each of them made of thin-walled bluish green or greenish blue glass.
The glass vessel fragments from the lowest layer above the floor at the western end of corridor 11 (FK 3139) were found within an area of a little more then one square meter. This layer had a very large content of ashes of burnt wood and contained some iron nails and bronze fragments. The evidence suggests that the glass vessels were stored in a wooden shelf or a wooden box in the niche at the western end of corridor 11 just in front of the wall which divides this corridor from room 39 This is only a preliminary interpretation of the metals finds from FK 3139. It may well be that the belonged to something different. . The glass sherds belonged to two large bowls, one with a tubular out-folded rim and one with a fire-rounded rim and a double fold in the wall, two smaller bowls of the same shapes as the two larger vessels, four beakers (a cylindrical and a conical beaker with a fire-rounded rim each, a beaker with concave base and a conical beaker with folded pushed-in base), a jug with fire-rounded rim, funnel-shaped mouth and a single trail, a flask with cylindrical neck and a jar with fire-rounded rim and mould-blown ribs on the body. All these vessels are made of greenish blue to bluish green thin-walled glass, which could occasionally be nearly colourless. The only exception from this context is a large cylindrical beaker with cracked-off rim, which is made of thick-walled, probably colourless glass and which bears an abraded decoration showing a Greek inscription and a herringbone pattern.
Both assemblages show complete sets of glass tableware of the mid 4th century AD, but they differ from each other. The set in room 6 consists almost only of good quality colourless thick-walled glass – at least the bowl for the presentation of food and three of the five beakers for drinking – with the addition of two beakers and two closed forms made of naturally coloured glass of a lower quality. The glass vessels from the western end of corridor 11 on the other hand are all made of lower quality thin-walled glass, the only exception being the large beaker with the Greek inscription.
The typical high quality glass tableware set as it is shown by the finds from room 6 consists of four thick-walled colourless vessels with cracked-off rim, being normally one shallow bowl and three conical beakers. Such sets with an identical composition were also found twice in room 12 and in the room between walls AN and BI each. Occasionally one of the three beakers can be replaced by a thick-walled colourless hemispherical bowl with cracked-off rim, as demonstrated by finds of such sets consisting of a shallow bowl, a hemispherical bowl and two conical beakers from rooms 27 and 13.
While the mentioned high quality glass tableware sets are very uniform in their function, shapes and composition, the low quality set from room 11 shows a wider variety of forms and shapes. There are large bowls as well as small bowls and there are different types of bowls as well as of beakers. But not only within this set there are different vessel shapes, the variety of shapes seems to be a common feature of the lower quality glass tableware sets within the house on EZ IV, as it is shown by similar sets in rooms 2, 12, 13, 16, 35, 37 and in the room between walls AN and BI. They consist always of one jug or flask and between three and five beakers of different shapes, but their bowl-composition can range between two large and two small ones like in room 11, one large and two small bowls (twice in room 12), one large and one small bowl (in rooms 2, 13 and 37) or only two small bowls (twice in room 16 and in the room between walls AN and BI each, once in room 35 and 37 each).
Looking at the rooms on EZ IV, in which glass tableware was found, there were two rooms, in which obviously two sets of each quality were stored, namely in room 12 and in the room between walls AN and BI. While the former can be regarded as a kind of storage room in the southwestern part of the house according to the abundant glass finds, the later was a kitchen, as it is clearly shown by the huge taboun discovered in this room Kolb – Keller 2000: 364. . Glass vessels were also stored in larger quantities at the western end of room 11 – as demonstrated above –, in corridor 13, where one high quality as well as one low quality set were found, and in rooms 2 and 37, with one respectively two low quality glass sets. While the glass vessels from room 11 obviously were stored in a wooden shelf at the western end of this corridor and the glass finds from room 37 are again belonging to a kitchen as shown by the taboun discovered in this room as well, the question why in the two smaller corridors 2 and 13 there were one or even two complete glass tableware sets, remains unanswered for the moment.
If one compares the other single glass tableware sets, it is remarkable that the two high quality sets were found in two rooms (6 and 27), which both had prominent architectural features and a rich interior decoration. In general, the spatial distribution of the high quality glass tableware within the house on EZ IV is concentrated in the western (or mainly southwestern) part – with the remarkable exception of the two high quality sets stored in the kitchen between the walls AN and BI, while in the other smaller rooms in the eastern wing of the house (rooms 16, 35 and 37) only glass vessels belonging to the low quality group were found. This shows once more that the glass used in this house at the time of its destruction is well divided between good quality glass in the bigger rooms and low quality glass in the smaller rooms, as it was already shown with the glass lamps found in the same building Cf. Kolb – Keller 2000: 366–370 Fig. 15, 1; Kolb – Keller 2001: 321–323 Fig. 15. .
Daniel Keller Seminar für Klassische Archäologie Basle University Schönbeinstrasse 20 4056 Basel Switzerland
