ABSTRACT
Small glass objects were highly mobile in the 1st millennium BCE and can be used as a proxy for transcontinental interactions in Eurasia. The present work shows that Mediterranean natron glass objects, many of which are glass beads likely made from Levantine raw glass, had spread to East Asia, and a large number of these probably arrived in China through the Black Sea region and the Steppe around the mid-1st millennium BCE. The swift diffusion of natron glass across Eurasia reflects the evolution and integration of intergroup networks without the involvement of formal trade agents or the triggering of a singular event, and was likely part of the increasingly frequent cultural exchanges in Eurasia at this time.
