5. Multimethod Analyses of Roman Sarcophagi at the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome

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Archäometrische und archäologische Studien an antiken Skulpturen im Museum der Bildenden Künste, Budapest

Die über mehrere Jahre durchgeführten archäometrischen Untersuchungen der antiken Steindenkmäler in der Antikensammlung des Budapester Museums der Bildenden Künste, die im Zusammenhang einer neuen archäologischen Erforschung der Denkmäler stattfanden, werden hier bekannt gemacht. Dabei hat sich gezeigt, daß die echte Kooperation der beiden Forschungszweige mittels intensiver Diskussion und Schärfung der Methoden und Argumente zu neuen Erkenntnissen führen kann. Die Beachtung archäometrischer Informationen durch die Archäologie bringt einerseits Bestätigung kunsthistorischer Einordnungen; sie wirft andererseits aber auch neue Fragen auf, die bisweilen zu innovativen Interpretationen führen oder auch unerwartet zu derzeit nicht lösbaren Problemen, die daher zu einer wissenschaftlichen Debatte anregen. In mehreren Abschnitten werden für diese Potentiale und Schwierigkeiten charakteristische Beispiele antiker Skulpturen der Sammlung aufgezeigt.This article the long-term archaeometric research on the ancient marble sculptures in the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, conducted in relation to new archaeological research on those Greek and Roman works of art. The cooperation of these two disciplines applied to ancient sculptures by discussing and re-examining the methods and arguments resulted in new findings. Consideration of archaeometric information in archaeological research may support art-historical classification on the one hand; on the other it often raises new questions leading to innovative interpretations or unexpected and in some cases even currently unsolvable problems, thus stimulating scientific debate. Several sections of this article discussing characteristic examples try to show the potential and difficulties of combined archaeological and archaeometrical research related to ancient sculptures in the Budapest collection

The Marbles of the Roman Villa of Chiragan at Martres-Tolosane (Gallia Narbonensis)

100 marble artefacts originating from the Roman villa of Chiragan and now part of the collections of the Musée Saint-Raymond at Toulouse were analysed and include the Herakles reliefs, the mythological tondos, a series of small-scale ideal sculptures and the collection of private and imperial portraits present in the villa. The local marble of St Béat quarried on the Pyrenees was used for the Herakles reliefs, the tondos, and the coeval portraits of the owner of Chiragan and his family, all sculptures stylistically identified as works of Aphrodisian sculptors dated to the end of the 3rd century A.D. by Jean-Charles Balty or to the mid second half of the 4th century A.D. by Marianne Bergmann. Import marbles, mostly Asiatic from Göktepe and Iscehisar (Docimium), were used for nine small-scale artefacts probably imported as finished products. Quite unexpected is the pervasive use of the marble of Göktepe for portraits of the Roman imperial period that were mostly imported from Rome as finished products. 59 sculptures from Chiragan and 11 portraits discovered at Béziers in the 19th century were analysed (Göktepe 37, Paros 17, Docimium 5, St Béat 5, Carrara 6). Between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. the marble of Göktepe rapidly replaced Parian lychnites as the sculptural marble of choice for high quality portraits. In late antiquity, marble use and workmanship at Chiragan were deeply affected by the wish to emulate urban models, but also met with the difficulty of importing foreign marbles to a region not easily reachable from the Mediterranean

Thasian Connections Overseas: Sculpture in the Cyrene Museum (Libya) Made of Dolomitic Marble from Thasos

Multi-method analysis has previously established that four out of 200 statues in Cyrene are dolomitic marble from the northern Aegean island of Thasos. Art historical analysis shows that three of the four are careful replicas of famous Greek prototypes, made by copying plaster casts of the originals. The fourth is a free interpretation of a now-obscure prototype. In two cases it seems likely that a workshop connected to Athens and Crete carved the Thasian marble, probably in Cyrene. Sculptors with a connection to Thasos may have been involved in finishing some or all of the sculptures, but the evidence is fragile

Architectural Decoration of the Imperial Agora’s Porticoes at Iasos

The present study deals with the decoration patterns, the craftsmen and the different marbles used in the porticoes of the Agora of Iasos. The recent discovery of a large white marble quarry district at Milas and a gray banded one at Euromos has suggested that previous hypotheses on the origin of marbles used in the Iasos Agora must be verified. For this purpose, several architectural elements in white and grey veined marbles were sampled and submitted to archaeometrical analyses (EPR, trace analysis and carbon and oxygen isotopes) in order to define exactly their provenance. These analytical results exclude the use of Aphrodisias and Stratonikeia marbles and confirm that of other local and extra-regional white marbles from Milas, Euromos and Proconnesos. This new evidence allowed the reconsideration of the origin of the decorative patterns and of the craftsmen working at Iasos during the mid imperial period

Unraveling the Carrara – Göktepe Entanglement

Systematic investigations of imperial portraits from the first century AD up to late antiquity revealed a dramatic change in the portrait marbles starting approximately in Trajanic times. By the beginning of the 2nd century a so far unknown marble of exceptional quality suddenly arrived in Rome and became the portrait marble par excellence, which has hitherto been taken for Carrara marble. The isotope composition alone does not discriminate sufficiently, but there are several other characteristics to enable unambiguous archaeometric identification. Trace element contents, namely low Fe, Mn and the exceptional high Sr numbers, discriminate the Göktepe perfectly against Carrara marbles. Characteristic differences in the trace mineral contents of these marbles also exist. The analytical data of the Göktepe and Carrara marbles presented in this paper allow an unambiguous discrimination of these marbles, those from Göktepe being in fact the most important portrait marbles of Roman Antiquity