A Ptolemaic petition of stone

uBulletin du Cercle d'Etudes Numismatiques 58/1, 12-15, 2021

Abstract: This paper lists and illustrates all the recorded examples of the rare bronze issues of the usurpers Macrianus II and Quietus, conventionally described as Asses. Some suggestions are put forward as to when and where these items were struck, and what their intended function may have been.

Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2016

The disproportion of published work on ceramics to that on lithics (to use the equivalent term) has always been a puzzle to me. This is not to deny that ceramics can usefully date strata in an excavation, that they were traded widely and can be proxies for other trade goods, or that sometimes they can be quite pretty. But these aspects-and not least long-distance trade-are generally true of stone objects too. Monumental construction in stone is the spectacular face of Rome's empire. Yet as recently as 2009 there were yards' worth of monographs on pottery in Oxford's Sackler Library, for instance, but just one shelf of some 4-feet worth of books on stone-and those did not include anything like the important book under review, which has emerged from a dissertation completed in that year. There used to be plenty of reasons for this relative neglect, but many of the reasons no longer hold true now that we have reached a turning point in what many call "marble studies" (although B. Russell is not a fan of this term). To say something about stone in a given context one must first figure out where it came from. Most stone was local and its provenance was often written off as obvious and uninteresting; the more glamorous imported stone, especially white marble, on the other hand, in the absence of laboratory research, remained resistant to provenance determination except by 'eyeball'. Of course, that did not deter the first scholars such as J. B. Ward-Perkins or R. Gnoli from identifying marbles and deducing trade patterns. They were building upon antiquarian research of the 19th c., much of which was Rome-based and of the 'gee-whiz' variety. Still, most of it was based upon painstaking observation and much remains useful today. 1 It has always been easy to to make rough identifications of the distinctive colored marbles patronized by the imperial court; beyond that handful, however, lie hundreds of local or regional polychrome rocks that have given up their secrets reluctantly (some relatively well known Italian colored limestones, such as breccia rossa appenninica or breccia dorata, were only nailed down recently; 2 palombino, ubiquitous in fancy Republican floors, remains "di provenienza ignota"). But, finally, we have reliable tools for provenancing stone samples, starting from carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis pioneered by H. and V. Craig 3 and developed and exploited with creativity and subtlety by N. Herz. 4 Electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy came along just when isotopes were starting to fail as a stand-alone method because so many newly-characterized quarries were presenting overlapping signatures. Now, however, isotopes or ESR spectroscopy, backed up by traditional petrography and the oddlysimple criterion of maximum grain size, can characterize almost any sample. And the other half 1 Above all, F. Corsi, Delle pietre antiche (3rd edn., Rome 1845). His last collection found its way to the Oxford Museum of Natural History (now available online at www.oum.ox.ac.uk/corsi), inspiring the (worldwide) repertoire, M. Price, Decorative stone. The complete sourcebook (London 2007) = The sourcebook of decorative stone: an illustrated identification guide (Buffalo, NY). 2 M. Bruno, "Il mondo delle cave in Italia: considerazioni su alcuni marmi e pietre usati nell'antichità," in M. De Nuccio and L. Ungaro (edd.), I marmi colorati della Roma imperiale (Rome 2002) 280-82; L. Lazzarini, "Sulla provenienza senese della 'breccia dorata', 'breccia gialla,' e 'breccia gialla fibrosa'," in P. Pensabene (ed.), Marmi antichi II. Cave e tecnica di lavorazione, provenienze e distribuzione (StMisc 31, 1998) 57-64. 3 H. Craig and V. Craig, "Greek marbles: determination of provenance by isotopic analysis," Science 176 (1972) 401-3. 4 N. Herz, "Carbon and oxygen isotopic ratios: a data base for Classical Greek and Roman marble," Archaeometry 29 (1987) 35-43; id., "Provenance determination of Neolithic to Classical Mediterranean marbles by stable isotopes," Archaeometry 34 (1992) 185-94.

The purpose of this monograph is to take a new look at various aspects of stone artefact analysis that reveal important and exciting new information about the past. This invovles reorienting our methodological approach to stone artefacts as well as the questions asked of them. The papers making up this volume tackle a number of issues that have long been at the heart of archaeology’s problematic relationship with stone artefacts, including our understanding of the dynamic nature of past stoneworking practices, the utility of traditional classificatory schemes, and ways to unlock the vast amount of information about the strategic role of lithic technology that resides in stone artefact assemblages.

Gnomon , 2013

This article explores the connection between evidence for Roman signalling systems and the Roman coin type known commonly as 'campgates'

Gnomon 92, 352-357, 2020

Maritime Archaeology and Ancient Trade in the Mediterranean. Proceedings of the 2008 OCMA Conference, Madrid. Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology 7, ed. by D. J. Robinson and A. I. Wilson (Oxford), 137–52., 2011

2024

How to Study Stone in the Stone Ages ………… 1 4.1 Flintknapping ……………………………......…………. 2 4.2 Lithic Analysis ………………………………......……… 3 4.2.1 Anatomy of an Assemblage …………………. 3 4.2.2 Attribute Analysis ……………………………….….. 5 4.3. Into the Mind of the Maker ………………......… 7 4.4 Timeline of Technology ………………......………. 8