This volume examines materials produced with the use of fire and mostly by use of the kiln (metals, plasters, glass and glaze, aromatics). The technologies based on fire have been considered high-tech technologies and they have contributed to the evolution of man throughout history. Papers highlight technical innovations of the technician/artist/pyrotechnologist that lived in the Aegean (mainland Greece and the islands) during the Bronze Age, the Classical and the Byzantine periods.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction: Lightning – fire – kiln – beacon
• Part One
  • 1. Ancient ceramic kilns: recorders of the earth’s magnetic field and firing technologies in Greek archaeological sites
  • 2. Firing temperature definition through the application of μ – Raman spectroscopy: indicative evidence acquired through the study of a ceramic kiln from the Knossos area
  • 3. Hagia Photia, Chrysokamino and the development of metallurgy in Early Minoan Crete
  • 4. Mycenaean metalwork: technical evolution and social transformation in the south-western Peloponnese: an analytical investigation of Mycenaean bronze artefacts from the area of Pylos
  • 5. Rhodian bronze casting workshops in the light of new finds
  • 6. Reviving the techniques of the Mycenaean goldsmith
  • 7. Remarks and hypothesis concerning the stereoscopic examination of mud and lime plasters in Minoan architecture: case studies for Monastiraki and Knossos in central Crete
  • 8. Hydraulic mortars of antiquity analysis, characterisation and evaluation
  • 9. Painting biographies
  • 10. Aegean vitreous materials of the Bronze Age: technological transfer and local innovation
  • 11. The glass workshop at 45 Vasileos Irakleiou Street, Thessaloniki: an analytical approach
  • 12. Beads and bead making in ancient Methone, northern Greece
  • 13. ‘The oil of Gladness’: the ancient tradition of the manufacture of aromatic oils in the Aegean 113 and the eastern Mediterranean
  • 14. A Minoan perfumery
• Part Two
  • 15. Chemical characterisation and provenance study of late antiquity (3rd–7th century) lamps from Rhodes
  • 16. ‘The walls are decorated with plates, jugs and cups trimmed with gold’: imported glazed ceramics in the Dodecanese from the 16th to the 19th century. The case study of the Decorative Arts Museum of 145 the Dodecanese
  • 17 I.C.A.R.O.-IKAROS: the pottery factory of Rhodes (1928–1988)
  • 18. Methods of production and ornamentation of Rhodian-Oriental ceramics from 1928 to 1988
  • 19. The usage of Lartian stone through the centuries
  • 20. Recent research providing clues on the Koan stone crafting during antiquity
  • 21. Dating hydrated obsidian artefacts from the Mediterranean region
  • 22. Microscopic observation of ecclesiastic embroidery from the Museum of Panagia Tsambika Monastery in Rhodes
  • 23. Icon of Deesis from the parish church of the Dormition of the Virgin in Trianta, Rhodes: the physicochemical study, conservation and restoration