Glass is one of the materials more widely developed throughout History. In the last decades, it has been stated a growing demand in the application of chemical-physical techniques to obtain more detailed information on technology and production of glasses in past societies. This research field lies within the domain of archaeometry. Results of a bibliometric study undertaken on 201 scientific articles published on ancient and historical glasses between 1987 and 2008 are presented in this paper. The study was carried out with the aim to address the evolution of glass archaeometric investigations in the last 20 years. Date of publication, journal and article types, topic, glass typology, analytical techniques, origin country of authors, and geographic location of samples were analyzed in this study, among other parameters. Resulting data indicate that archaeometric research on glasses has experienced an exponential growth in the period 2000-2008. Roman and Medieval glasses have been the materials more frequently investigated.

The authors wish to acknowledge partial funding of the program Consolider TCP Ref. CSD2007-00058 and professional support by the Historical and Cultural Heritage Thematic Network (CSIC). T. Palomar also acknowledges a pre-doctoral grant for the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Peer reviewed