Stone material of regional provenance from Sirmium

Abstract

The stone artefacts from Sirmium, held at the Museum of Srem, were sampled and analyzed in order to establish an archaeological database connected with Roman quarries and possible transport routes along the Sava and Danube Rivers. Of the artefacts made of Neogene limestone three lithotypes were identified. Two of them were determined as originating from the known Roman quarry in the Drina Valley (NE Bosnia). For the third lithotype and its subtypes a model of the hypothetical quarry is proposed, the location of which is suggested to be outside the Drina river basin. Beside limestone, the sampled artefacts also revealed two types of porous volcanoclastic rocks of andesitic composition, which supposedly originate from two different microlocations in the Drina river basin.

Keywords

• Roman
• quarry
• limestone
• volcanoclastic
• lithotype
• Neogene
• the Drina
• Sirmium