No abstract

The paper presents evidence of Roman marble production in the Balkan region, specifically from the south-eastern Rhodope Mountain area (modern Bulgaria) and Armira. Although the Roman marble trade and production in antiquity are well known in Prokonnesos, Thasos, and several other production sites, marble deposits from inland Thrace have received far less attention. In 2018–2019, a systematic survey of south-eastern Bulgaria (Roman Thrace) was carried out by our team in collaboration with the National Archaeological Institute with Museum in Bulgaria. White marble quarries and outcrops were investigated in situ with the goal of characterizing the macroscopic qualities of the stone. Quarry samples were collected and analyzed through various techniques—petrography, isotopic, and chemical analyses—and compared with the architectural decorative marble and artifacts from the Roman villa at Armira. We demonstrate that the geochemical and petrographic features of these samples indicate a marble provenance restricted to a few selected sources. We conclude that the local marble from the Armira and Kamilski Dol quarries was widely used for the complete architectural program of the Roman villa of Armira.

This paper presents the research conducted on the origin of the white marble architecture of the basilica of Ascalon (Israel). The basilica is located in the civic centre of the Roman city of Ascalon and it is one of the relatively few known monumental buildings of Roman Palestine. The various construction phases of the basilica are dated from the first century BC to the third century AD. As Israel has no sources of marble, this paper explores the origin of the white marble that was used for several architectural elements such as bases, columns, capitals, and figurative pilasters to identify their provenance. The methodology includes petrographic studies, chemical and isotopic analyses, and chemical analyses of inclusion fluids and extractable salts (crush-leach analyses) of the marble. The results demonstrate that the imported marble highlights the wide extent of connectivity and interregional trade in the region. Some of the main sources of building materials used in the construction programme of this basilica originate from famous supra-regional quarries such as Prokonnesos and Thasos, and different quarries on the island of Lesbos. The similarities between the Severan basilica in Ascalon and the contemporary building in Leptis Magna are also discussed in this paper. In combination with the absence of a built-up port in the ancient city of Ascalon, these results also provide important information on the economy of Roman Palestine, transportation networks, and the logistical organisation of large-scale building programmes.