Chemical, Mineralogical and Textural Characterisation of Early Iron Age Vitreous Materials from the Golasecca Culture (Northern Italy)

A systematic archaeometric investigation of the protohistoric glass materials from the Como area has been carried out on a set of beads made of vitreous material. The beads are from Early Iron Age cemeteries of the Como area. This research is part of a long-term project aimed at defining a high-resolution chemical chronology of protohistoric Italian glass (Angelini et al. 2004, 2005), and the Como project specifically seeks to yield data that would cover the gap regarding the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.