GAMING PIECE

A complete Roman glass bi-chrome gaming counter dating from AD 200-410. The counter is a convex 'blob' of opaque black glass with three sub-circular white glass spots on the top convex surface. The counter is sub-circular in plan, with a slightly dished flat-bottom. The gaming counter features a number of air holes from the manufacture process on both the upper and lower surface..

Other glass gaming counters are recorded in Crummy (19995:92) and Rees, Crummy, Ottaway, and Dunn (2008:116). A set of glass counters was found on a 4th century lead coffin at Lullingstone. The set consisted of fifteen white and fifteen brown decorated counters. (Liversidge 1973:350).

Dimensions: diameter: 16.03mm: thickness: 6.73mm; weight: 1.89g

Other glass gaming pieces on the database are LON-6DEFB6, WILT-713199, SOM-2DDDA4 and HESH-5792F7.

Cosyns (2011:32) writes "In whatever colour the glass counters were made, they all had the distinct plano-convex shape featuring a convex top side, a flat bottom, and a rounded edge [see Chapter 3]. Only on rare occasions has an unevenly pinched off edge been noticed; for instance, on the Oudenburg piece [cat.no.465]. Was the piece intentionally tooled, or is it only due to long use? Concerning the method by which glass counters were made, they are generally described as ̳formed by dropping a small blob of hot glass on to a flat surface' (Price 1995, 129) or as ̳made by placing small ―spoonfuls‖ of molten glass to set on a bed of sand' provoking ̳a typical sand-roughened underside' (Crummy et al. 2007, 186). However, when examining the bottom side of the counters in black glass, two distinct surfaces are noticeable, implying different techniques: the first group has a flat and smooth bottom side (Figure 19a), whereas the second group has a more irregular, pitted surface (Figure 19b)" he continues "The irregular, pitted surface on the glass counters can be explained as the result of a sudden thermal shock that the hot and viscous glass underwent when touching a cold(er) working surface (an aspect that also can be observed on mould-blown vessels). The absence of such chill marks on the counters with a straight and very smooth base surface has to be interpreted as the fusion effect by remelting shaped pieces, placed in the furnace on a smooth heat-resistant plate that gradually took the same temperature as the shaped glass sherds. This latter technique is described by Pliny the Elder, who explains the production of black glass counters:

Pieces of broken glass can, when heated to a moderate temperature, be stuck together, but that is all. They can never again be completely melted except into globules separate from each other, as happens in the making of the glass pebbles (calculi) that are sometimes nicknamed ̳eyeballs' (oculi) and in some cases have a variety of colours arranged in several different patterns. (Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, XXXVI, LXVII. 199 [translation by Eichholz, D.E., 1962, Pliny X, 157])"

References:

Cosyns, P. 2011. The production, distribution and consumption of black glass in the Roman Empire during the 1st - 5th century AD: An archaeological, archaeometric and historical approach. Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Crummy, N. 1995. The Roman small finds from excavations in Colchester 1971-1979. Colchester Archaeological Trust Ltd, Colchester.

Rees, H. Crummy, N., Ottaway, P. J. and Dunn, G. 2008. Artefacts and Society in Roman and Medieval Winchester. Winchester Museums Service, Winchester.