Novi infundibulum na nekropoli antičkog Jadera

The zone where the Roman cemetery of Iader extended was confirmed in the recent rescue excavations in Ivan Zadranin Street in Zadar. In the excavations 35 Roman burials were discovered. The great majority of the discovered graves consist of cremation graves with extremely rich finds and grave goods. One of them was a cremation grave – grave 34 – containing a glass funnel or infundibulum. Including this new find of a funnel, so far 7 completely preserved glass funnels have been discovered in Zadar. Along with two funnels without a specific context for the finds, all of the others were uncovered in a grave context of cremation burials during archaeological excavations at the Roman cemetery of Iader. Glass funnels are a quite specific and rare form of freeblown glass vessels, which serve for transferring but not storing various liquids. Perhaps the finds of numerous glass funnels in this region, which are presumed to be of eastern Mediterranean production, were a result of activities in processing aromatic and medicinal plants. Such a hypothesis would certainly be supported by the numerous finds of other glass forms, but also the existence of one or more local glass workshops. Thus the need for glass products in general, and hence also for funnels, considering that glass is very neutral in terms of the contents stored in it, would be based in activities producing various pharmaceutical preparations. Judging from the glass funnels, such activities took place in the second half of the 1st century AD.