The glass bowl is at least 1,800 years old and has no fractures or cracks on it.
A Roman blue glass bowl in perfect condition has been unearthed at a residential and greenfield development site in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Such bowls were made by leaving the molten glass to cool and harden on a mold. The strip pattern was drawn while the glass mixture was still liquid. Metal oxide was causing blue.
This bowl was once a valuable object for the inhabitants of early Nijmegen. Chief archaeologist Pepijn Van de Geer believes it is a masterpiece that deserves to be exhibited in the museum.
Nijmegen was established as a Roman military camp in the 1st century BC, with a civilian settlement of the local Batavi peoples. By 98, the settlement of Nijmegen was the first city in the Netherlands today to be renamed municipium (Roman city rights) and made its inhabitants Citizens of Rome.
The newly discovered bowl was not locally produced. It was produced in a fine glassware workshop in a large Roman city. The Roman city of Vetera (now Xanten), just across the border from Germany, was known for its glass production and it was also in the Batavi region, so there should have been lines established between the regions for the exchange of goods.
However, the bowl in question is of such high quality that it may have appeared in Italy and been sold to the north, or it was purchased by a Batavia legionnaire who brought it home when he retired from the Roman army.
The Winkelsteeg excavation in Nijmegen also uncovered a large number of burial items from the Roman settlement, including tombs and containers, mugs and jewellery.
In the region, the remains of structures that can survive from the Roman period to the present day are quite sparse and mostly traces of wooden structures have been preserved. But archaeologists are documenting the remains and soil color to make a map of the houses here.
