Introduction

Historians of glass are interested in understanding the role of glass objects within the social and economic life of people in the past, and in exploring glass as a material expression of culture. The ancient networks of glass were complex, involving the movement and exchange of raw materials, finished objects and craftsmen as well as specialised technical and artistic knowledge. Such networks were also far-reaching, and glass seems to have been regularly adopted into the material culture of those who came in contact with it.

Archaeological research in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman, as well as coastal Iran, is revealing evidence for the trade and use of glass objects by people living on the shores of the Gulf. This history is largely one of import, as local glassmaking and glassworking seem to have occurred only on a nonexistent or very limited scale: the vast majority of glass was carried as finished items overland or overseas from the Hellenistic, Roman, Parthian, Sasanian and Islamic glass centres located to the west, north and north-east of the region. During the Bronze and Iron Ages, there is a very limited use of glass in the Gulf, mostly for personal ornament in the form of beads. Glass vessels begin to appear in burials in a significant volume in the second century BCE, with small bottles and bowls imported from production centres bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean, namely Egypt and the Levant. Sometime in the third to fourth centuries ce, the Gulf experienced a shift from Mediterranean to Mesopotamian sources of glass. There was a second fluorescence of glass use by people living in the Gulf during the Early Islamic period, and emerging evidence suggests that at this time vessels were imported into the region from around the wider world and, in at least one instance, both raw glass and glass vessels were produced locally.

The study of glass recovered from archaeological sites within the Gulf is still in its infancy, and has to date focused primarily on the visually observable, typological aspects of glass (e.g. vessel shapes and functions).