Premier bilan des recherches sur la pierre de construction à Mégara Hyblaea

In this article, we offer a first assessment of the preliminary research on the construction stone in Megara Hyblaia, fruit of the joint works of a team of archaeologists and geologists. The petrographic analysis of representative samples of Megara’s stone architecture have first shown that three types of stone had been used: all three are calcarenites belonging to local Pleistocene and Miocene geological groups. In Megara’s territory, we have then identified several ancient stone quarries as potential extraction sites. Three of them bear geological features matching perfectly those of the archaeological samples: the Intagliata, the Pirrera di Melilli and the north coast of the Thapsos peninsula.