First Findings of the Study of Roman Glass Import at Karakabak Settlement (Mangyshlak Peninsula)
Первые итоги изучения римского стеклянного импорта с городища Каракабак (п-ов Мангышлак)
Valiulina S.I. AstafIev A.E. Bogdanov E.S. Nuretdinova A.R. KrasilNikov P.V.
2025Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Ufa Archaeological Herald
2025#25Issue 2319 - 328 pp.
The article is devoted to the first findings of studying glass obtained during excavations at the Karakabak settlement. The settlement lays on the north-eastern coast of the Caspian Sea (Republic of Kazakhstan). This large trade and craft center existed in the 1st/2nd – 6th centuries in the Caspian-Pontic section of the Great Silk Road and connected Rome, Byzantium, and policies of Central Asia, India and China. According to the morphological and technological features, the study manages to determine several types of products from Roman craft centers among a large number of diverse artifacts. The analytical sample set includes vessel fragments and beads. A large amount of broken glassware at the settlement may indicate processing of imported glass at the site. This practice existed everywhere for Roman glassmaking. The dish glass is evident of a very high technological level of production. This feature is distinctive for Roman workshops. The entire scope of samples reveals only two items that allow imagining the shape of the products. One of them is a fragment of a violet-colored glass with straight walls turning into a fused rim and a polished leaf-shaped ornament. The other recognizable fragment belongs to a closed vessel. It is a light-green bottle or jug with a horizontal thread of glass applied under the rim. Also, there are 44 beads of Roman origin. Among them monochromatic ones predominate. The technological aspects are the most apparent in the mosaic beads. The materials published in the article clearly reflect one of the most important categories of goods that traveled along the Silk Road through the Mangyshlak Peninsula to spread Roman products across the Aral-Caspian region and further to the eastern Ecumene.
beads , Great Silk Road , Karakabak , north-eastern coast of the Caspian Sea , Roman glass
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Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russian Federation
Margulan Institute of Archaeology, Aktau, Kazakhstan
Institute of Archeology and Ethnography Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation
Institute of Archaeology named after A.Kh. Khalikov of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan, Russian Federation
Kazan Federal University
Margulan Institute of Archaeology
Institute of Archeology and Ethnography Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Archaeology named after A.Kh. Khalikov of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan
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