Roman tessera full#

If it was found to be genuine, he was entitled to all the privileges that the best-known guest-friend could expect. When a stranger claimed hospitium, his tessera had to be produced and submitted for examination. This token was probably, in many cases, of earthenware, having the head of Jupiter Hospitalis stamped upon it. The tessera hospitalis was the token of mutual hospitality, and is spoken of under Hospitium, p619A. As a means of identification, the original parties exchanged tokens tesserae hospitālēs. These ties were hereditary, descending from father to son, so that persons might be hospitēs who had never so much as seen each other, whose immediate ancestors even might have had no personal intercourse. In the Obligations of Hospitium there are obligations imposed by a covenant, and these were of the most sacred character any failure to regard its provisions was considered sacrilege, bringing upon the offender the anger of Iupiter Hospitālis. Such was the tokens of tesserae hospitālēs. But originally these tokens were created as a record of appreciation or as commemoration of eternal debt of familial appreciation rather than a legal obligation. The banded textures of some tesserae were also carefully investigated, and multiple factors influencing the changes in color (different distribution or relative abundance of opacifiers, crystal size, micro-texture, chemical composition of glassy matrix) are identified.As a means of identification, or expression of right or privilege the original parties often exchanged or agreed to something in exchange and consummated that agreement upon displaying them. Despite the general comparability of both assemblages with the published data on glass tesserae coeval in age, the present study shows differences in the technological solutions used for obtaining the same color, and less common coloring and opacification techniques in three samples from Pordenone. Antimony-based opacifiers are identified in most of the blue, turquoise, white, yellow and green tesserae, and copper-based opacifiers in the red ones cobalt and copper are the most frequent ionic colorants used to obtain various shades of blue, turquoise and green colors. All the tesserae are natron-based and chemically comparable with major Roman compositional groups, except for red samples. Results show that both the base-glass and the coloring/opacification techniques identified are consistent with the presumed Roman dating of the mosaics. The applied analytical protocol comprises micro-textural and preliminary chemical characterizations of the tesserae by means of OM and SEM-EDS, mineralogical analysis of the opacifiers by XRD and chemical analysis of the glassy matrices by EPMA in addition, on specific tesserae, micro-Raman spectroscopy, FORS, and EPR were also performed to clarify the type of opacifer, coloring ion and oxidation state, respectively.

Roman tessera full#

All the available colors and textures were selected for archaeometric analyses, in order to guarantee the full characterization of both assemblages and comparisons between the two sites. In the current study, a set of 60 glass tesserae from two disrupted Roman mosaics located in Pordenone and Trento (northeastern Italy) are analyzed, with the aim of investigating the coloring and opacification techniques, with a focus on the causes of specific textural features.