Fingerprinting White Marbles

Tradition has it that Emperor Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. In Roman society marble was viewed as the expression of stability, prosperity, and the extent of the empire. Marble quarries were opened, supply chains were developed, and the trade in the valuable raw material flourished throughout the Imperium. Marble was equally employed as a building material as it was for the production of statues, furniture, and the decoration of interior spaces. The ability to display marble splendour satisfied the requirement for prestige on behalf of the Roman elites, be it in the private sphere or in public construction projects. While the identification of the origin of coloured marbles represents no great challenges, white marbles present intractable problems. First by means of the development of a specialised combination of methods, and with the employment of large-scale comparative data banks, it is now possible unambiguously to attribute the white marbles as well. In this way, a leading trend is now evident that is of great importance for the understanding of ancient economic systems. Thus, on the one hand, a close connection seems to have existed between quarries and cities, while on the other hand white marble appears to have been very selectively used as well. Until now these hypotheses were not verifiable, since complete data and indeed quarries and objects from a region were lacking. With the project at hand, it is now possible to close this loophole. The province of Thrace is not only rich in marbles, it also lies in immediate proximity to the large- scale and intensively exploited white marbles of Thasos and Prokonnesos. Furthermore, the region experienced a massive phase of urbanisation in the 2nd century AD, in the course of which numerous cities were monumentally expanded. In this project, a sampling of all of the local quarries in Thrace (today Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey) is planned, as well as samples from architecture and a variety of classes of object (sculpture, inscriptions, sarcophagi, objects) in the larger cities, villas and sanctuaries of the province. By means of this approach it will be investigated whether individual cities had quasi "their own" quarries from which they brought in the raw material, and in what way the logistics functioned, from the depot to the workmanship of the material. In terms of the objects, care will be taken to separate the local products from the imports, and to study whether the raw material or the finished product was delivered. Closely connected to these two issues is the significance of the commissioners of the work, be they members of the city administration, Roman entrepreneurs, or also private patrons. The project is carried out in close cooperation with the National Archaeological Institute of Bulgaria, whose experts will also be active at the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna. The archaeometric analyses will take place at the University of Leoben.

In Roman antiquity, marble was a symbol of wealth and status. Our project, "Fingerprinting White Marbles", explores this idea within Roman Thrace from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. By bringing together experts in archaeology, geology, architecture, and economic history, our goal is to uncover: a) How marble was used across Thrace, including coastal regions influenced by the Greek culture and interior areas controlled by the Thracians. b) How marble usage fits into economic models in terms of demand, regional markets, and the relationship between raw material quality and finished products. Unlike previous studies that focused solely on the prestigious aspects of marble, we also investigate everyday objects and smaller quarries in rural areas. We are particularly interested in understanding how cities, their institutions, and individuals contributed to the demand for marble as they developed their communities. Our findings highlight the widespread use of local quarries, particularly the high-quality marble from the Rhodope Mountains in Philippopolis. This challenges previous assumptions and offer fresh insights into the economic, cultural, and political dynamics of the Roman Empire, particularly during periods of significant change.