Marble trade in the Roman Mediterranean: a quantitative and diachronic study

Abstract

Marble provenance studies in archaeology have become increasingly popular in recent decades. This has resulted in a large quantity of analytical data becoming available for archaeological marbles. This article presents the results of a quantitative study of the distribution of white marble in the Mediterranean based on an analysis of the available provenance data for the Roman period. The study shows increased distribution of white marble between the late 1st c. BCE and the end of the 2nd c. CE. A decline in distribution from the 3rd c. CE was less abrupt than traditionally believed and shows object-, material-, and region-specific trajectories. The marble distribution data is finally evaluated within a wider socio-economic frame, considering factors such as the marble trade system and broader Roman economy, changes in cultural practices related to statue erection, importance of reuse and recycling, growing ruralization, and reduced interest of the elite in urban capital investment in the later Roman periods.

On the Use of White Marbles in Roman Forum Sempronii (Fossombrone, Marche, Italy): An Overview of the Archaeometric Data on Architectural Elements

“…Even though most of these stones have been documented only in small volumes, they clearly illustrate that Forum Sempronii had access to the main marble trade networks of the Roman Mediterranean, with imports coming from Asia Minor, Greece (mainland and Aegean islands), North Africa, and Egypt. The only polychrome stone discovered of regional origin is the so-called rosso ammonitico from the central Adriatic Apennine region or from the Southern Alps, near Verona, a stone which figures also among the polychrome marbles used at nearby Roman sites such as Sentinum, Suasa, Urbs Salvia and Urvinum Mataurense [1,3,10,11] Overall, these observations are in line with those for the wider central Adriatic Italy and the rest of the Italian Peninsula [12,50]. As for chronology, the results obtained for architectural, sculptural, and relief materials indicate that imports arrived at Forum Sempronii already as early as the Augustan period, in particular for the decoration of the augusteum.…”

A Bayesian alternative for Aoristic analyses in archaeology

“…The current 'go-to' solution in analysing archaeological datasets dated by means of relative chronologies is to employ a suite of techniques with a shared origin in aoristic analysis. The technique was initially developed in crime science (Ratcliffe & McCullagh, 1998), and after a few early applications in the early 2000s (Johnson, 2004;Mischka, 2004), it experienced mild success within archaeology (Baxter & Cool, 2016;Brozio et al, 2019;Crema, 2012;Franconi et al, 2023;Furlan, 2017;Hinz et al, 2019;Hoebe et al, 2023;Kleijne et al, 2020;Knitter et al, 2019;Levy et al, 2022;Orton et al, 2017;Palmisano et al, 2017Palmisano et al, , 2019Pollard, 2021;Roalkvam, 2022;Romandini et al, 2020;Romanowska et al, 2021;Stoddart et al, 2019;Taelman, 2022;Verhagen et al, 2016;Yubero-G omez et al, 2016), partly aided by the development of several dedicated R packages such as aoristic, datplot, archSeries, and kairos (Frerebeau, 2022;Orton et al, 2017;Ratcliffe, 2022;Steinmann & Weissova, 2021). The conceptual idea behind aoristic analysis is not new, and it is worth noting that similar ideas were independently introduced within archaeology before and after Ratcliffe's seminal paper (e.g.…”