Lombardic Glassworking in Tuscany

Abstract

The excavations carried out since 2005 at Aiano-Torraccia di Chiusi, near San Gimignano (Siena) in Tuscany, by the team of the Université catholique de Louvain, directed by Prof. Marco Cavalieri, have unearthed the remains of a Roman villa, dated between the 3rd and the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th century A.D. The complex, abandoned in the 6th century, was occupied by Lombardic (Langobard) artisans in the period between the 6th and the 7th century A.D. The artisans installed various kinds of workshops in the rooms of the representative part of the villa. The workshops were connected one to another and were provided with water from a complex system of channels, probably fed by a higher positioned reservoir. They include a ceramic workshop with a kiln and other spaces for different working stages, a large and well-organized iron smithy, three rooms in which Roman glass tesserae and glass fragments were recycled and reworked, and apparently also a workshop for the production of copper-based items. The latter can only be hypothesized because of the remains recovered from some not yet fully excavated areas, behind the North/North-East wall, in which the waste from the workshops was dumped. Other remains suggest that in one or more rooms of the Roman architectural structure gold was also worked. Well organized and efficient Lombardic workshops for so many different productions, connected to each other and competently provided with water and possibly fuel for their various needs, dated to this period have never been identified and thoroughly studied before. This article presents the analysis data of the materials from the excavation, which allows the reconstruction of the different glass working processes carried out on this site.