THE ROMAN SHIP 'PUNTA SCIFO D' AND ITS MARBLE CARGO (CROTONE, ITALY)

In the first three centuries AD, large-scale building projects, both in Rome and in the western colonies, stimulated the demand for marble from the eastern quarries. The Punta Scifo D shipwreck - discovered in 1986 in the Bay of Scifo, south of Crotone, Italy, and investigated in 2011 and 2013 by a team from the Universita Ca' Foscari of Venice - is an important source for the reconstruction of this kind of trade in the Roman Empire. Studies of the cargo, dated to the third century AD, were the basis for the virtual reconstruction of a barge about 40 m long carrying a cargo of almost 340 tons. Petrographic and isotopic analyses demonstrated that it carried three different types of marble: mainly Proconnesian, some Pentelic, and one slab of Dokimean marble. The ship probably departed from the island of Marmara, and stopped at Ephesos, and perhaps also at Piraeus.