The assertion is well known: “Rectification is for the wise”.
And the archaeological community has done it without any lukewarmness.
It was not, as published by the prestigious
Pyrenae magazine
,
a valuable glass bottle with Greek letters found at the Roman site of Los Bañales (Zaragoza), but rather a bottle of North American medicine that someone threw at the place at the end of of the 19th or early 20th century.
The supposed author of the bottle, a Greek glazier from the 2nd century whose name would include the letters WITH, was not such either, but these were part of the phrase in English "
with lime & soda ".
” (with lime and soda).
But, how could such a notable mistake be made when the finding had been reviewed by recognized national and international independent experts?
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The study
Inscriptions on glass.
A new Greek mark on the bottom of a bottle found in the Roman city of Los Bañales de Uncastillo,
which was made public in the latest issue of
Pyrena
e, revealed a surprising discovery: a piece of a bottle with Greek characters that showed commercial activity international of the Aragonese settlement.
In the text, it was explained that “this work reveals a singular mark in Greek on a glass fragment, surely belonging to the bottom of a bottle.
After reviewing and ordering the uses of glass as an epigraphic support in the Roman world, the text is related to the possible name of one of the
uitrarii
[glaziers] attested in the Mediterranean and it is also proposed, with paleographic and archaeological criteria, a dating, the 2nd century”.
The authors, the professor of Ancient History and director of the Archeology Diploma at the University of Navarra, Javier Andreu Pintado, and the epigrapher Aitor Blanco-Pérez, doctor from the University of Oxford, recalled in their study that Los Bañales was a Roman city monumental, "one of the most dynamic enclaves in Hispano-Roman archaeology", "the first in the Iberian Peninsula in which hemispherical windows in blown glass are documented".
Bottle containing the medicine called Scott Emulsion, with cod liver.
In the summer of 2019, in the northern neighborhood of the city, the discovery was made.
“It appeared with the characteristic greenish and scaly patina typical of the corrosion processes that affect ancient glasses and, in particular, the Roman ones,” the experts wrote.
After cleaning and restoration, it was dated, having been found surrounded by supposedly contemporary Roman materials, in the second half of the 2nd century.
The article was reviewed by four independent experts who raised no objections.
The inscription on the bottle fragment is HTIW, but since it is found at the bottom of the container, it could also be interpreted the other way around (WITH) or be part of the Greek root
σωτήρ
, which could correspond to the name of the glassmaker.
As both specialists were not experts in this material, they sent their manuscript to Ana Belén Martínez García, author of a doctoral thesis on glass at the Roman site of Petavonium (Rosinos de Vidriales, Zamora) and to Belén Madariaga García, specialized in inscriptions on glass.
They did not object.
The article was also submitted to the Journal of Glass Studies, arguably the best publication on historic glass in the world, which rejected the study as being too “specialized and separate from the general interests of the journal”.
Its managers, after admitting the "effort to systematize the epigraphic uses of glass and the interest of the piece found", recommended that the information be transferred to another magazine dedicated to ancient inscriptions.
The authors thus had to wait two years for
Pyrenae
to give its approval, since before accepting a scientific report it is submitted to “peers”, that is, two independent analysts check the veracity of what the editors affirmed.
Finally, the article was accepted last April and made public.
A prestigious magazine specializing in glass rejected the publication for being "too specific" and recommended that it be sent to another focused on epigraphy
This soon caught the attention of archaeologists Esperanza Ortiz Palomar and Juan Á.
Paz Peralta, who have been researching ancient glass for more than 30 years.
When they realized the big mistake, they wrote the
Pharmacological Glass Bottle with Embossed Patent (ca. 1884-1910) report.
Review of glass with a "Greek" mark from the Roman city of Los Bañales
.
His conclusion was devastating: not a bottle with Greek inscriptions, but the bottle of an American medicine that was sold for a dollar and that contained a compound of pure cod liver oil, six grams of hypophosphites of lime and three of hypophosphites of calcium. soda, "useful for the treatment of consumption".
View of the northern neighborhood of Los Bañales (Zaragoza).Juanmi Círez
In their counter-report they make it clear that the letters on the bottle do not correspond "to old patterns, but rather are typical of industrial and mechanized production."
They date the manufacture of the bottle between 1884 and 1910. “The fragment with the letters in relief coincides, morphologically, with bottles for pharmacological preparations.
In this case, the 190-millimeter container was sold for one dollar and the 240-millimeter container for 1.95.
This shape and brand design was chosen for many patent medicines, such as the one registered by Scott & Bowne in New York on July 4, 1876. The decoration is raised letters, forming legends written in English.
The brand is arranged horizontally, and, therefore, its reading, although the format of the container is vertical, allowed a paper label with a drawing to be adhered”.
The bottle's WITH inscription (with,
in English) was followed by the words “lime & soda”.
Scott's Emulsion concoction was patented, and the firm owned factories in Canada, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France.
It was sold without a prescription and was recommended to combat a wide spectrum of diseases during the winter.
We must value the great work at the Los Bañales site and convey our appreciation to the archaeologists”, say the experts who detected the error
Ortiz and Paz Peralta explain that, “given the speed with which news is currently spread in the scientific community, we wanted to prevent this correction from being made from outside our borders, probably with little scruple towards colleagues and generating widespread discredit.
We must value the great work that is being done at the Los Bañales site and convey our appreciation to the archaeologists.
As defenses, the study of archaeological glass is one of the most complex, lending itself to classification errors given its many peculiarities and archaeological intrusions [appearance of non-contemporary pieces of the site, dragged by water, an animal or an excavation] can be due to multiple causes.
Regarding the magazine
And it is that the scientific publication has also rectified what it considers “an honest error of identification of the mark, which must be considered as an intrusion in the archaeological stratum.
The authors, the [independent] blinded peer reviewers, and the editors of
Pyrenae
agree with this retraction.”
For his part, Professor Javier Andreu maintains that, “in short, this shows that the article evaluation system is not a panacea.
In this case, four reviewers (two for the
Journal of Glass Studies
and two for
Pyrena
e) saw the article and no one thought the glass was modern.
Secondly, he confirms, as the text of the retraction says, that intrusions are possible in archeology and more so in a site that has been historically highly frequented, such as Los Bañales”.