New Evidence on Marble Exploitation in Ancient Northwestern Spain: The Quarry of As Eiras (Gondrame)

Abstract

This study presents an interdisciplinary investigation towards identifying the source of a marble that was previously unrecognized albeit being used in the NW of Spain in ancient times. By integrating geological, archaeological, and historical approaches with a suite of well-established analytical techniques, we have obtained compelling evidence suggesting that a coarse-grained white marble from the Gondrame area (O Páramo, Lugo province, Galicia) was utilized in the Roman and Medieval periods. The paper details the approach, from the coarse-grained marble artefacts and cultural heritage monuments that have been documented in Galicia, and methodologies employed, while focusing on the identified outcrops and quarries at the centre of our enquiry. The results so far show a very limited scale of the exploitation but, at the same time, they challenge the traditional paradigm of local stone resources in ancient Galicia, where the marble from O Incio was traditionally considered the only one to had been exploited and employed. Indeed, recent finds underscore the need for a reassessment of existing assumptions about the region’s lithological exploitation since Roman times and adding to the existing catalogue of Spanish marbles known to have been used in the distant past. Thus, the marble from Gondrame represents an exemplary case study, demonstrating the importance that can be hold by even small sites such as the quarry of As Eiras: they not only deserve our attention as elements of our geocultural landscape, but also hold enormous potential for advancing historical, archaeological, and geological understanding of a territory through its stone resources, even when these are relatively scarce in both geological and heritage records.

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