Provenance studies applied to building stones of a Bronze age tholos tomb (Messina, Italy)

Abstract

During the Bronze Age, essential advances occurred in the field of architecture. Roundhouses and tombs with circular stone walls appeared. The present research aims to geolocate the sources of raw building materials used by workmen during the Bronze age to construct a Mycenean-type tholos tomb discovered in the alluvial plain of the Messina Ionian slope (Fiumara Gazzi). The used method has foreseen the geological, sedimentological, structural, mineralogical, and petrographic mesoscopic analyses of the tomb's building stones to compare them with the rock features of the surrounding geological outcrops of the Peloritani Mountains. The studied building stones consist of metamorphic, magmatic, and sedimentary rocks. Crystalline building stones are mostly wellrounded alluvial pebbles and boulders; most sedimentary stones are characterized by hand-made well-squared shapes with a minor amount of alluvial pebbles. Studies on the provenance of the alluvial pebbles and boulders of crystalline and sedimentary rocks indicated that they derived, respectively, from the highest and intermediate zones of the northern end of the Peloritani Mountains, where the crystalline rocks (Aspromonte and the Mela Units) and the Tertiary to Quaternary sedimentary covers are respectively in tectonic contact because of a normal fault of the Messina Straits tectonic system. The sedimentary hand-made building stones are derived from local quarries in the surrounding areas, near San Filippo, where the well-bedded bioclastic calcareous rudstones and grainstones are well exposed and visible at a distance.