Shipwrecks and stone cargoes: some observations

• B. Russell ^[1]
  1. [1] King's College London

     King's College London

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Interdisciplinary studies on ancient stone: proceedings of the IX Association for the Study of Marbles and Other Stones in Antiquity (ASMOSIA) Conference (Tarragona 2009) / coord. por Anna Gutiérrez García-Moreno, María Pilar Lapuente Mercadal, Isabel Rodà de Llanza, 2012, ISBN 978-84-939033-8-1, págs. 533-539
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Vast quantities of stone, particularly prestigious decorative stones, were moved overseas in the Roman period. Detailed discussions of the mechanisms underlying this traffic, and the actual practicalities of transportation, have tended to focus on a limited handful of shipwrecks, typically between twenty and thirty, most of them located off southern Italy. A number of conclusions made on the basis of this sample have become widely accepted. In particular, the idea that cargoes of stone were always large and that there existed a specialised type of ship for the movement of stone - "naves lapidariae". In recent years, however, a number of new discoveries have added important nuances to this picture. This paper aims both to draw attention to these new discoveries and to re-examine the evidence from other sites that have been neglected to date. Overall, it argues that there was no such thing as a 'typical' cargo of stone and that different stone objects - architectural elements, sarcophagi, statues - were transported and traded in very different ways