The application of microfossils in assessing the provenance of chalk used in the manufacture of Roman mosaics at Silchester

Abstract

Microfossils recovered from chalk tesserae in mosaics from the Roman town Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, southern England, are used to suggest a provenance for the source-rock. The microfossils include foraminifera characteristic of late Cretaceous (Campanian) foraminiferal biozone BGS20 (quadrata macrofaunal biozone) and subzone BGS21i (basal mucronata macrofaunal biozone). Calcareous nannofossil assemblages from the same tesserae are poorly preserved, preventing precise age determination, but confirm an age of Santonian to Campanian. As indurated chalk beds of this age are not present in the chalks of southern England, it is probable that calcretized chalk, formed by secondary calcification beneath Palaeogene rock cover, was used to manufacture the tesserae. This suggestion is supported by a comparative analysis of chalk tesserae from the Norden Roman site in Dorset.Although the provenance of the chalk in some of the Silchester tesserae can be placed only within a broad geographical area of downland in southern England, others apparently originated in the Dorchester-Swanage-Portsdown area, some 100 km to the

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