Exhibition: the late-antique glass factory at Jalame

ANCIENT MATERIAL CULTURE: How Did the Romans Make Glass? A Hill in Israel Knows. The Romans were famed for their glass – all made using raw glass manufactured in ancient Israel, Lebanon and Egypt. A new exhibit at New York's Corning Museum sheds light on the process and why the ancient glassmakers had to move shop every 10 years (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

Why is Corning now celebrating the glass industry of yore based on a workshop from the middle of the story of glass? And the workshop was an unremarkable one at that, operating on a remote hilltop in northern Israel during the sunset of the Romans.

Well, the excavation and the historical record at Jalame have become a textbook for scholars of ancient glass manufacturing, say Yael Gorin, head of glass at the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Katherine Larson, curator of ancient glass at Corning.

For more on ancient glass and glass production, including another glass kilns workshop discovered in Israel in 2016, see here and links (cf. here, here, and here).

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