What would a glass furnace look like?

[mpoole]

Found a third glass bead today though

Blue? Annular? Tease!

[deadlylampshade]

This is just a random thought but if you cant be in the structure, then what about an activity like a smoke house or place to dry out food, skins etc?

:face-approve: like this idea. You appear to be very close to the sea/inlet from the previous photographs you have shown.

Very pretty site...

[Stuart Rathbone]

Hey, what's with all these people calling my site pretty? Are you trying to seduce her? She's mine I tells ye, all mine!

But thanks

Yeah the smoke house idea might make sense, and we are indeed very close to the sea. I'm still concerned about the apparent temperature of the fire though, but perhaps its more a low smoldering heat that slowly burnt the soil than a quick roaring one...

Anybody ever dug up an actual smoke house, or seen one in action? We have them round here too, but they aren't in use anymore. What sort of fire do they use (a smokey one I guess ) but are they covered over like with a charcoal clamp or use a special extra smokey fuel or anything that might be diagnostic we could look for.

On a related note Is there any process by which you can tell the temperatures achieved in a fire? Other than sort of meting points of associated artefacts that sort of thing? Had to back fill today but about one third of the hearth deposits were left in situ in case there was a reason to go back...

Beads were one small white one, a slightly larger white one, both opaque and a translucent(ish) dark blue one. They are small ring shaped beads , not much more than a thin band of glass around a hole, diameters estimated at between 1cm and 0.5cm and we only have half of each bead. I'll try and get some pics of those posted over the weekend.

Thanks for all the suggestions/advice

[P Prentice]

i kinda like the bead made from quartz idea - you would need a furnace to super-heat the quartz even in a presumbly small crucible. plenty of fuel, plenty of oxygen - does your door/vent open to the sea breeze?
somewhere in the back of my mind i have a memory of somebody testing heat-cracked (quartzite) pebbles to determine what temperature was reached but my memory is in rapid decline

i can see nothing in what you have displayed to gainsay this but one would expext to see crucible fragments in the surrounding area

the trouble with excavating little (admittedly pretty) boxes like this is you miss the context in which it was used - any chance of stripping another 20-30m around the outside?

[mpoole]

Beads were one small white one, a slightly larger white one, both opaque and a translucent(ish) dark blue one. They are small ring shaped beads , not much more than a thin band of glass around a hole, diameters estimated at between 1cm and 0.5cm and we only have half of each bead. I'll try and get some pics of those posted over the weekend.

Thanks for all the suggestions/advice

Tiny beads, then! There are ways to tell if the beads are melted/wound or shaped beads, even in the case of opaque ones. I'm looking forward to seeing the pics.

[Dinosaur]

The old kipper-smoking house (shed?) they knocked down at Henrietta Street Whitby a few years ago was absolutely minging, with big lava-like flows of wood-tar dripping out of all the air vents etc - suspect would be hard to miss on site? (assuming site conditions conducive to tar surviving)

Not an expert but am sure I remember something about TRM being able to indicate firing temperatures, would at least tell you if it had been hot enough to re-set the sample, presumably TL would tell you the same?

[Dinosaur]

Oh, you can melt glass in a small bonfire, certainly don't need any sort of furnace, you never done the thing with stretching old coke bottles into amusing shapes? }

[Stuart Rathbone]

I had a quick poke about about smoking fish. Seems nowadays they use a low smoldering fire of woodchips or sawdust, when they arent using chemical smoke of course. Doesn't sound like our thing.... really need to find a way to confirm the temperature of that fire...what is this TRM you speak of?

Now here's the beads. Also pretty

[Stuart Rathbone]

And this is a collection from a recently excavated Early med cemetery. Looking awfully similar....

[mpoole]

You can indeed melt glass in a bonfire, and stretch bottles into interesting (and frightening) shapes, but melting glass and getting it to go around a mandrel and make a reasonable bead takes more than that.

Thanks for the photos! Blue annular beads, the most popular colour and shape. It's amazing how small a bead you can wind with a bit of hot glass. They're going to look very similar but you can sometimes tell quite a lot about the maker from the beads, including finish quality of the holes, things like the fosetta (dimple) at each end and shaping.