The use of white marbles for sculpture in Roman Gortyn (Crete) as revealed by archaeometric analyses

Gortyn was an important Cretan town from the late
Archaic to the Hellenistic period and then became one of the
provincial capitals of the Roman Empire. It controlled the
whole of Crete and Cyrenaica and was a flourishing centre
of trade and agricultural products in the first centuries of our
era. In more than 100 years, many portions of the Greek and
Roman town were unearthed under the supervision of the
Italian Archaeological School of Athens and a considerable
number of stone artefacts found, many of them made of
imported marble since the local variety was grey and of poor
quality. Statuary and other prestigious marble sculpted artefacts
found in Gortyn were sampled and subjected to
archaeometric examination (by way of optical microscopy in
thin section, powder X-Ray diffraction and mass spectometry
for the determination of the C and O isotopic ratio) in order to
identify the quarries they came from. The results obtained
from the analysis of several dozen white marble objects have
indicated the use of a quite wide variety of species including
Parian (from Lakkoi), Pentelic, Thasian (dolomitic and calcitic)
and (occasionally) Proconnesian marbles. The first three,
especially Pentelic, were used for most of the statuary.