Editing Vitreous enamel (section)

===Ancient===
The earliest enamel all used the cloisonné technique, placing the enamel within small cells with gold walls.  This had been used as a technique to hold pieces of stone and gems tightly in place since the 3rd millennium BC, for example in [[Mesopotamia]], and then Egypt.  Enamel seems likely to have developed as a cheaper method of achieving similar results.<ref name="Osborne, 331">Osborne, 331</ref>

The earliest undisputed objects known to use enamel are a group of [[Mycenae]]an rings from [[Cyprus]], dated to the 13th century BC.<ref name="Osborne, 331"/>  Although Egyptian pieces, including jewellery from  the [[Tomb of Tutankhamun]] of c. 1325 BC, are frequently described as using "enamel", many scholars doubt the glass paste was sufficiently melted to be properly so described, and use terms such as "glass-paste". It seems possible that in Egyptian conditions the melting point of the glass and gold were too close to make enamel a viable technique.  Nonetheless, there appear to be a few actual examples of enamel, perhaps from the [[Third Intermediate Period of Egypt]] (beginning 1070 BC) on.<ref>Ogden, 166</ref>   But it remained rare in both Egypt and Greece.

The technique appears in the [[Koban culture|Koban]] culture of the northern and central [[Caucasus]], and was perhaps carried by the [[Sarmatians]] to the ancient Celts.<ref name="Osborne, 331"/>  Red enamel is used in 26 places on the [[Battersea Shield]] (c.350–50 BC), probably as an imitation of the red Mediterranean [[coral]], which is used on the [[Witham Shield]] (400–300 BC).  [[Pliny the Elder]] mentions the Celts' use of the technique on metal, which the Romans in his day hardly knew.  The [[Staffordshire Moorlands Pan]] is a 2nd-century AD souvenir of [[Hadrian's Wall]], made for the Roman military market, which has swirling enamel decoration in a Celtic style.  In Britain, probably through preserved Celtic craft skills, enamel survived until the [[hanging bowl]]s of early [[Anglo-Saxon art]].

A problem that adds to the uncertainty over early enamel is artefacts (typically excavated) that appear to have been prepared for enamel, but have now lost whatever filled the cloisons or backing to a [[champlevé]] piece.<ref name="Osborne, 331"/>  This occurs in several different regions, from ancient Egypt to Anglo-Saxon England.  Once enamel becomes more common, as in medieval Europe after about 1000, the assumption that enamel was originally used becomes safer.