Glass at the Time of the Crusades: A new source for the socio-economic history of the Levant?

The so-called Mediterranean commercial revolution of the central middle ages coupled with the Crusader occupation of the Levant utterly reshaped the region's socio-economic landscape, leading to an increase in commercial exchange and markets, urban production and socio-cultural interaction. This project uses the important evidence from glass to assess technologies of production and patterns of circulation and trade in a period of significant change. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates chemical analysis, archaeological evidence and historical records, I will investigate the contribution that glass can provide in shielding new light on the complex and poorly understood socio-economic relationships in the medieval Levant.