Introduction

Glass is commonly found in archaeological excavations, often in small fragments as a result of its characteristic fragility. However, despite the important role that glass played in historical societies, archaeology has paid relatively little attention to this material, at least in comparison to other materials such as ceramics. One of the main reasons for this is that glass is not considered a reliable chronological indicator, as glass typologies often remained unchanged for long periods of time. Even so, the study of archaeological glass is crucial if we are to fully understand its value for past societies, as well as the associated mechanisms of production and circulation.

Since the production of the earliest glass objects, in the mid-3rd millennium B.C., the consumption of glass has done nothing but increase.

A Brief Theoretical Introduction

There are likely to be as many archaeological perspectives on technology as there are archaeologists, but this is not to say that there are no recognizable trends in the way archaeology has approached the issue of technology. One, perhaps the most common, especially among archaeologists who are largely involved in rescue projects, is seemingly atheoretical. Elements of material culture that can be argued to have a more or less close relation to technology are carefully described and inserted into wider narratives without much consideration being given to their points of connection with other aspects of society such as ideology or identity. In fact, there is nothing atheoretical about this position, even if the theoretical basis on which it sits is not made explicit (and is sometimes not even acknowledged as such by the archaeologists responsible for it). Theory is not necessarily an argument full of complicated words with philosophical overtones. The assumptions we have, the way we order reality in our heads, is our theoretical position, the framework within which we place and organize the data provided by our senses.

It is necessary to dispel the idea that if we do not openly or consciously embrace the theoretical premises of recognizable theoretical schools (such as processual archaeology or evolutionist archaeology), we are presenting a completely objective description of the archaeological record that can be regarded safely away from the adulteration of theoretical constructs.

Introduction

The Royal Workshops of the Alhambra Project was created with the aim of studying the urban area of the Alhambra, where substantial archaeological remains are still visible. The central role played by glazed ceramics in the material culture and political projection of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada (13th–15th centuries) and the plausible assumption that a good deal of luxury ceramic production took place in the palatial city, right under the gaze of the royal palaces, made the study of industrial remains in the Secano (the name now given to the urban sector of the hill) a very tempting proposition. It is well known that medieval Muslim rulers often encouraged the state sponsorship of craft activity as a way to create a recognizable material culture to represent their house or polity. We aimed to find those royal workshops and establish more firmly the technological knowledge and industrial prowess mobilized by the Nasrid rulers, which was at the forefront of their ideological and material strategies for survival in the convulsive Mediterranean of the Late Middle Ages.

As the reader of this volume may have figured out by now, very little has gone according to plan. Although there are very powerful reasons to still believe that the royal Nasrid workshops that we set out to find were once there, the incontrovertible fact remains that they are there no longer in the area that has been explored so far, at least not in any recognizable shape. There are Nasrid industrial remains, but they are so tenuous that taking their interpretation any further than we have done would be adventurous, to say the least.

Despite this, we are perfectly happy to say that, as far as we are concerned, the project has been a resounding success. This may sound a little eccentric coming from a project called the Royal Workshops of the Alhambra which has managed to find no royal workshops at all, in the Alhambra or elsewhere. Yet we stand by that conclusion, because the result of our research is that we now know a good deal more about the history and archaeology of the Alhambra than we did before we started.