Early Vitreous Materials from Spain: Chronological and Compositional Variability in the Bronze Age Beads from the Alicante and Albacete Provinces (about 1650–900 cal BCE)

This research constitutes a systematic archaeological and archaeometric study on ornamental vitreous material from Spain dated to the Late and Final Bronze Age (LBA–FBA, about 1650–900 cal BCE). Our multi-analytical approach combines morphometric, textural, and chemico-mineralogical analyses with typo-chronological and spatial investigations to diachronically quantify the distribution of the beads and highlight how their recipes vary over time. The analyses were performed on a set of 17 beads coming from four archaeological sites in the Alicante (Cabezo Redondo, Cueva de las Delicias, and Peña Negra) and Albacete (El Amarejo) provinces. We were able to document the first mixed-alkali glassy faience ever recorded in Spain and the oldest Egyptian blue bead discovered in western Europe. Additionally, we discovered that plant-ash glasses seem to predominate in this area during the LBA and up to the early FBA. It is only during the FBA (tenth to ninth century BCE) that the earliest natron glasses start to appear, and they show the iron-rich and the aluminum-cobalt variants already observed in numerous beads from European and Mediterranean contexts dated from the tenth to the eighth century BCE.