Why do We Care?

Two questions prepare us for our discussion on marble studies: how do people study ancient marble artworks, and, more generally, why do we care? The purpose of this project is to make the field of marble studies accessible to a broader audience by introducing historical methods of research and understanding the developments of the discipline. Its broader goal looks at how this scientific field interacts with other areas of academic and public life, focusing on perspectives gained from both the history of science and art history.

Within the field, scientists, archaeologists, and historians are interested in obtaining information from the physical and chemical structure of marble. Through the use of different methods (see the section “Chemistry of Marble and Major Analytical Techniques”), specialized laboratories focusing on material sciences have studied what makes different types of marble unique. Scientists mainly seek to identify the region of origin of marble, down to a specific ancient quarry, from which they can sometimes determine the approximate era of production of an artwork. Many quarries opened later in history, so the identification of a specific quarry’s use in an artwork that has been dated using other methods (e.g. style, records of ownership, inscriptions on the piece) can show that a quarry was in use earlier than originally believed. This was the case when the Pergamon Altar was studied in Berlin from 1994 to 2004 – the museum’s research team discovered that the altar was made from Proconnesian marble (from modern-day western Turkey).[1] 

This was an exciting discovery because the methodologies from marble research produced interesting results not just for those in the field of marble studies but also for those studying broader historical disciplines. A critical element of this project is to learn what this relatively obscure branch of science can teach us about cultural heritage and how it achieves that. In the case of the Pergamon Altar, the discovery unified different divisions of cultural heritage and history. It was known that the Hellenistic city-state Pergamon had no marble quarry of its own, so it relied on imported marble, but there were several nearby possible exporters. When Proconnesos was found to be the source, it was surprising because the quarry was thought to have only been first used in Roman or perhaps even Byzantine times, but this study showed the quarry was used in the earlier Hellenistic period.[2] This new understanding of the use and trade of materials from Proconnesos led to a reinterpretation of the region's history, pushing back the formation of trade routes and artistic production there.

When did interest in marble begin?

Sources on marble and discussions go back to the ancient world. In Rome, Pliny the Elder describes the stone and categorizes different types by their location in Book XXXVI of the Natural History. In the discussion of marble from the Greek island of Naxos, he notes: 

For polishing marble statues, as also for cutting and giving a polish to precious stones, the preference was long given to the stone of Naxos, such being the name of a kind of touchstone that is found in the Isle of Cyprus. More recently, however, the stones imported from Armenia for this purpose have displaced those of Naxos.[3]

Others focused on the material throughout history, and by the nineteenth century, geologists developed an interest in the many different types of marble they found. Faustino Corsi, a lawyer and amateur geologist from Rome, began collecting as many samples of marble as he could in the early nineteenth century. His catalogue contained a historical preface, focusing on Roman interests in marble. He sold his collection of stones to Oxford University in 1827, the first of several collections of decorative stones that focused on marble – others include the Lepsius (now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Amsterdam), Ravestein (in the Musée du Cinquantenaire, Brussels), and Bowdoin collections (in Harvard University).[4]