Investigating Colour in Aegean Late Bronze Age societies using Scientific Analysis to Provenance glass and to improve public engagement with Science

My project will be the first to investigate the significance of colour in Aegean Late Bronze Age glass and frescoes, primarily through scientific analysis of glass and comparisons with pigments used in contemporary frescoes. I will investigate the provenance of colourants and pigments from a range of contexts (i.e. domestic, ritual and burial) within the Mycenaean world, from the heartland on mainland Greece to its periphery such as the Dodecanese. This will contribute to the social/ritual values of colour used across a varied range of contexts and investigate the extent to which people were willing to go to acquire colour. Furthermore, the provenance of both glass and colourants will develop current knowledge on the wider Bronze Age trade and exchange networks and provide a much-needed sensitive chemical fingerprint for a significant number of Mycenaean glass samples for the first time, creating new patterns of production and supply. I will also synthesise 'Mycenaean' plant ash glasses of a variety of colours and hues to investigate the effects that different proportions of metal colorants (e.g. copper, cobalt, iron) had on the final colour achieved, providing new insights into the potential control of colouring processes. Throughout the project, I will seek to engage and encourage public interest in experimental archaeology the application of science to archaeology.
My project builds upon my undergraduate and master's dissertations which both focused on Mycenaean glass. My undergraduate dissertation, for which I received 75%, examined colour in Mycenaean glass and showed a link between motifs on Mycenaean moulded glass artefacts and the colours used. My master's
dissertation is a focused study on the late Bronze Age glass from Rhodes (British Museum) and Crete (Ashmolean Museum, application pending). For that, I will be looking at the chemical composition in relation to trade and colour in order to build a clearer picture of the role of glass in the Bronze Age Aegean. In preparation for my PhD, I have begun to investigate museums for relevant and accessible collections. I will also seek to deepen an ongoing collaboration with both the British and Ashmolean Museums established during the research for my undergraduate and masters research. I have received training in the use of both the Electron Microprobe technique and Scanning Electron Microscopy at the Nano Centre at the University of Nottingham.