HAIFA, ISRAEL—Chemical analysis of glass unearthed at sites in Europe and from shipwrecks suggested that the beach sand and salt used to make the glass originated in Israel. “Now, for the first time, the kilns have been found where the raw material was manufactured that was used to produce this glassware,” Yael Gorin-Rosen of the Israel Antiquities Authority Glass Department told Discovery News. Archaeologists working with the Jezreel Valley Railway Project found fragments of flooring, pieces of vitrified bricks that could be from the walls and ceilings of the 1,600-year-old kilns, and raw glass chips. Gorin-Rosen and her team say raw glass was produced on an industrial scale at the site, sometimes in chunks weighing in excess of ten tons, and sold to workshops in smaller pieces across the Roman Empire, where it would have been melted again in order to produce glassware. For more on archaeology in Israel, go to "Off The Grid: Tel Kabri."
