Rumiantseva O.S.

Key words: glass-making industry, chemical composition, classical period, early medieval period.
The article reviews the latest international studies on late classical and early medieval glass-making. They show that during the time in question most of the glass found its way to Europe as a semi-finished product to be later worked into artifacts. During the first half – the middle of the 1st millennium AD Europe had three main sources of glass: one possibly in the Syro-Palestinian region, another in Egypt, and the third has not yet been identified. This data amends the systems of interpreting the composition of ancient glass that are often encountered in Russian studies.