I’m pretty sure that was Morgan Freeman. He got his stuff confiscated by medieval Scottish TSA and then transferred to the Nottingham Penitentiary where he met Robinhood.

Mystery solved by early 90’s Hollywood.

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I mean, it's not that difficult:

• The glass was made during the Crusades period.
• The castle could've hosted Islamic Commanders convening with Scottish Commanders talking strategy.
• Vikings traded with Islamic countries and some of their jewelry was found in Viking tombs dating back to the 12th century. Maybe some Scottish merchants did too?

Well, we know there were links between Scotland and the Islamic world in the twelfth century. In 1105, king Edgar of Scotland gave a gift of a camel (described by the Annals of Inisfallen as animal mirae magnitudinis, “an animal of remarkable size”) to Muirchertach Ua Briain, then the most powerful king in Ireland. It can’t have been fun for the camel.

The line "glass degrades in the acidic soil" or whatever is confusing. There's not many acids that can damage glass I don't think. Peat bogs I don't think are that acidic, at least not enough to damage glass. Am I wrong?

I think the acidity of peat bogs is about a pH of 3 or 4 ... don't quote me though.

"I think the acidity of peat bogs is about a PH of 3 or 4" - u/rosefiend

>Bog water typically has a pH range of 3.3 - 5.5, and transitional bog waters have a pH in the range of 4.5 - 6.0. Numerous studies at Sifton Bog have shown the pH to be quite variable and infrequently less than 4.5.

What you get if you google the PH of Peat bogs, specifically from a website called Thames river :D

What about coke in glass bottle? Coke has like pH of 3

i mean, they’re probably looking for something more conclusive. less of “how could this have possibly come here” and more “how exactly did this make it here”

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Lol generally I google stuff but tonight I was being lazy

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You're correct for relatively short timescales but medieval Islamic glass was mostly of the soda-lime-silica type. On the shelf of a medieval castle it'd last a few lifetimes. But in wet and acidic conditions we find that the soda and lime components of the glass on the outer layers would react and change the structure of the material.

Glass has an impure and uneven lattice (which is good because it allows us to mould it at high temperatures), meaning water molecules can seep into gaps in the lattice and draw away structural components such as the lime. This happens incredibly slowly since the structural bonds are really strong. But over the course of centuries sitting in a peat bog we see that lime reacting away, leaving a brittle and opaque product.

The process is called weathering and I'd really recommend the book "Ancient Glass" by Julian Henderson if you're interested and want to read more

Thank you

And it would noticably degrade the bottle in a few centuries

The Galloway Hoard, a Viking-era treasure cache discovered in south-west Scotland, includes a vessel engraved with Sassanid Zoroastrian designs.

Edit: 3D image made from a scan of said vessel.

Edit: this comment is a better answer.

Over hundreds of years, immersion in even weak acid can have an effect. Same as how splashing a bucket of water against a cliff won't do much, but given enough time, waves will scrape it away like butter.

I'm not interested enough in glass to read that book, but by God, I'm glad you were.

I mean copper was transported to the Middle East from Cornwall back in the Bronze Age so…. Trade. That is the answer!

Edit: tin not copper

>It can’t have been fun for the camel.

Why not? Camels would love it in Ireland, sure its great craic!

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Getting there might have given it the hump.

Probably go flat before that. Better drink it up.

Wow are you a scientist or something

Well you see the prince and heir of the castle was participating in the Third Crusade. This young Crusader was captured… while awaiting his punishment for theft, he attempts escape. His comrades are killed but his escape is assisted by a local. The men escape the city together, find a boat, and make their way back to England er… I mean Scotland. They become legendary outlaws, and they fight a war against a usurping sheriff…

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>Well, we know there were links between Scotland and the Islamic world in the twelfth century.

This is true, and we know it even further back than that. Right-through trade links existed between Romano-Britain for wealthy traders, while different routes were available to the mixed peoples of the post-Romano vacuum, and beyond.

By the 12th century some trade and communication links were so robust you could make a cash deposit in Edinburgh and withdraw it in local currency as you got off the boat in the Holy Land. True story!

EDIT: Downvotes but no challenge as to which part of this you consider incorrect? Peculiar.

Second edit... faith in common sense restored... and now I'm off down a hole in the rain, wish me luck 😂

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Close enough. I'm actually impressed.

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“That's a smart move, Mike”

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Europe and especially the UK seem to have a lot of specific stones or bricks with long and storied histories. If Sir Saint Turbilops' Parapet Keystone gets visits still because it used to be his toilet seat on campaigns, of course we should find out more about this glass

That's a the awesome part about archaeology. There is always someone who knows way too much about a material or item used in the past. It's also why my wife never asks me about stone tools but thats whatever haha

This raises a whole different story on its use and destruction. You have to answer how the pestle with the poison ended up in the chalice in the palace.

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Actually he had great craic in the pub.

If Roman coins can end up being traded as far as Japan, then I’d suggest that a beautiful glass or even beautiful glass fragments could end up from the Middle East into Scotland.

Halfdan, you cheeky bugger!

Or a Timelord punching a diamond wall.

Thank you! I'm a former horticulturist who writes gardening books, so this is kind of garden-variety knowledge for me. :D

Yo, where can I read more about this? This is fascinating.

Source

Heck, the glass could've changed hands multiple times as it traveled across Europe. Nothing says it went directly from the middle east to Scotland.

I want to know about stone tools.

Do you ever feel like stone tools fell out of fashion too early? It seems to me that most cooking and eating tools could be stone instead of plastic or metal. After throwing out a lot of teflon pans and easily broken plastic cups, it makes me think such things.

Are there any stone tools you think should be picked back up? I use a mortar and pestle instead of a food processor for instance.

May I interest you in way too much info about projectile points?

Eh maybe. There is a reason they were replaced in the manner that they were in many cultures. For example, along the Great Lakes we see that many cultures begin to replace stone points and knives with copper elements scrapped from copper trade goods as soon as they had access to the trade goods. Copper was easier to work with, easier to rework, and simply just sturdier than a stone tool. Once the British and French started trading copper pots we suddenly see that everyone is obtaining these pots and dismantling them to use the copper for tools. Parts of the rim would become knives or fishing hooks, for example. I'm generalizing for a bit, but the biggest reason people went away from stone tools is that they can be finicky to work with. I flintknap in my free time, and it can be VERY frustrating to spend an hour on a point only to have it break because I hit in incorrectly when trying to break a flake off.

Makes me wonder if a crusader brought It back, but that'd be a long journey with glass. The later crusaders did use ships to travel most of the way, like the one that took Lisbon Portugal from the moors. I could totally see a Syrian beaker being looted and brought back from Lisbon. It Lines up with the 12th century, but of course, speculation.

Vikings raided islamic Iberia a few times.

I prefer the version where he swims back to England wearing tights.

Not copper but tin.

Copper was relatively common, and most of the Bronze Age empires had their own supply. Tin was much rarer, and so was traded much further.

I've also heard that the name Britain (and Brittany) come from the Cornish tin trade, but I've not seen evidence.

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There were also Muhammad’s running around medieval England and Ireland so it would not be surprising if there were actual Muslims who made it to Scotland as well as goods from the region (not suggesting that is how the glass got there though).

https://www.caitlingreen.org/2021/01/macamathehou-in-lincolnshire.html?m=1

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The Vikings travelled the Atlantic in that?!

Meant tin, thanks for the correction.

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This is a perfect comment and the reason I come to this website

Truly unparalleled navigators.

Why is the glass Islamic but the castle not Christian?

Vikings established trade routes that were used for centuries. Makes perfect sense.

I have a hypothesis that because so much damage is done to stone by the freeze and thaw cycle of water, that a cliff made of butter would be more durable than a cliff of relatively weak stone. I like to go to the next level and try some experiments, but so far nobody has been willing to underwrite my proposal for $1.7M worth of butter to build my test cliff.

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It always amazes me the rabbit holes of information you can go down into. I’m not sure I’m interested enough in glass to read the book ancient glass but I would absolutely watch a video on it.

I hope this will be more substantial than the time they wondered how roman coins could have ended up in a medieval castle in okinawa.

I think the first heatwave would end your experiment, assuming animals had not eaten it.

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The Knights Templar set up that system and it made them so rich that the French King Philp IV and the Pope Clement conspired to steal it all.

Absolutely and same here lol. It's not just the material you study though - you learn loads about the people who used them, the place they lived in, the society they were part of and how they interacted with the wider world.

Also you learn so fucking much about their trash

My genealogy traces back to medieval times- a relative born in Scotland during that period is recorded as having died abroad in Syria. Family legend says he was a falconer; is there potentially any truth to this?

>it made them so rich that the French King Philp IV and the Pope Clement conspired to steal it all.

Well... the Knights Templar were effectively French, despite later retrocon that makes them an "English" bastion, and they made a great deal of wealth from ursury so the money was always in a legal limbo. Eventually, as you say, the cash was taken by the Crown and the Knights fell from favour.

You took their words out of context!!!

It's larger and more buoyant and stable than it looks.

Oh look, another storage pit full of pot sherds and random faunal remains. Maybe a rodent burrow or twenty

I think its from the name of a tribe of celts that the Greeks believed to be the main tin traders on the fabled isles of cassiterides. They called them something like the prettanoi - but this was first mentioned like 400 years after the tin trading had stopped.

The Romans ran with this theory, the name was latinised, the celts subjugated, a B swapped with a P and boom Britannia it is.

Here's an article with pictures of the actual glass fragments found

Likely hard to steer though.

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Eh, just depends on whether you care where you end up.

Hmmm... Sounds like something Liam Neeson would say!

Clovis!! That’s all I got.

Not quite Scotland, but King Offa of Mercia minted gold coins containing Arabic script in the style of Caliph al-Mansur of Baghdad in the mid-8th century.

Westerns think of the era of post Roman downfall as a 'dark age', but it was really an age of global trade links being established by technological improvements. Norse longships that could run on ocean and way upriver. Arab warriors incorporating horses into their mobile attacks. And a BIG example of the establishment of Arabic as a wide-ranging spoken and then written administrative language, after the introduction of paper-making from China.

There's a reason we still use ceramics for plates, cups, bowls etc... not strictly stoneware but I suppose it could still come under that bracket. Weve made items from ceramic for a long time and it's incredibly durable, cheap, easy to clean and tough. Look at how we'll preserved many roman mosaics are as well

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Somebody did not read the article.

The castle has no Biblical imagery?

Yep, I haven’t studied it in a while but I did an entire research project on 18th-20th century iron nails. I’m obsessed for no good reason, but I’m fine with that oddly enough lol

Sand/ Silk Road?

Fluted points are overrated. Madison triangular points are waaaaaay cooler

The square headed kind?

Its impure and cloudy because casting was done at lower temps. Technology wasn’t that good yet unless you had enough money to get the fire hot enough.

I was of the apprehension that the atlantean route stretching from north Africa to at least as far as Scotland, was an established concept. Evidenced by cultural, linguistic, musical, and artistic artifacts. I didn't think this was in lively dispute. The concept of cultural exchange between sea faring coastal population from Scotland to North Africa that is.

Go that way very fast And if something gets in your way Turn

Source?

;)

It’s probably not much of a mystery. Some of my Scottish ancestors were in the Crusades. It shouldn’t be shocking that some brought back pillaged art/artifacts.

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Of course, ceramics is just stoneware without most of the downsides

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Didn't anyone see Robin Hood with Kevin Costner?

Thank you I always loved reading European Medieval history and feel it’s under appreciated by most.

There are a ton of watering holes in Ireland I hear.

That's nothing. A guy built a replica of a 2000 year old phonecian ship and sailed it around the coast of Africa and then from Tunisia to the Dominican Republic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_Ship_Expedition

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Ramirez brought some replacement glass as a present for Conner.

There where a lot more before 2008, that's for sure

Ignore my ignorance, but what changed in 2008?

Please, give me your best spiel on stone tools!

Global recession, felt like nearly everywhere closed down

Well shoot maybe you should contact the researchers and clear this all up for them.

Thank you for the thorough response.

Mostly yes was working at a French Fort in Alabama where we found a whole bunch of construction materials and I found a whole bunch in situ next to a limestone foundation. Was super cool

Surely no great mystery, Islam had spread to Iberia by about the 8th century, and Scotland had some minor trade links there. That Islamic items ended up in Scotland should be of no surprise to anyone who knows the history.

Actually, Scotland had minor trade links with Islamic Iberia at the beginning of the 8th century, and had contact with the Muslim world from some time in the 7th, you are a few centuries out.

I said in, not from! I cite 1105 because the article dates the glass to the 12th/13th centuries.