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The Origin of Africano

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

M. H. Ballance
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Extract

Africano is one of the most distinctive, although one of the most variable, of the ornamental stones commonly used by the Romans. It is a breccia containing lumps of white, grey or, most typically, pink marble, in which the crystals vary from minute to very large, the largest usually occurring in well-defined veins or patches. These lumps of marble, which may be of any size up to several feet long, are embedded in a black, dark green or greyish matrix that is usually harder than the marble itself. It probably derives its modern Italian name simply from its generally dark colour, rather than from any early speculation as to its origin, and since Corsi's attribution of it to Chios was disproved by the discovery that Chian marble was the Portasanta of Italian stonemasons, it has usually been listed as of unknown origin.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 34 , November 1966 , pp. 79 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1966

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References

1 Corsi, F., Delle Pietre Antiche, 3rd ed., Rome, 1845, pp. 99f.Google Scholar; for the Chian quarries, Brindley, W. in R.I.B.A. Trans., New Ser., iii, 1887, pp. 47Google Scholar, and Porter, M. W., What Rome was Built With, London and Oxford, 1907Google Scholar; Portasanta was attributed by, Corsi to Iasus in Caria, which in fact produced a most distinctive dark red marble with straight or contorted white bands, which is characteristic of Justinianic churches at Constantinople, Ravenna and Ephesus.

2 I am indebted to Mr. F. G. Dimes of the Geological Survey and Museum, South Kensington, for the following description of a thin section of a specimen from the spoil-heaps at Kara Göl.

‘The specimen is seen to be composed of granular calcite; the areas coloured pink and white are of finer and more even grain than the rest. There are also organic fragments in the form of sea-urchin spines included in one or two of the pink and white patches; these patches have a rather angular outline. The rock appears to be a recrystallized limestone breccia.’ He adds, however, that some of the Kara Göl specimens also contain noncalcareous material in the form of a silty mudstone, and that one consists mainly of quartz.

3 Pococke, Richard, Description of the East, London 1745, II, ii, pp. 44Google Scholar, repeated almost verbatim by Richard Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor, 1775, p. 99; Hamilton, W. J., Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia, London, 1842, II, pp. 17ff.Google Scholar; CIL III, 419; Béquignon, Y., Rev. Arch. Ser. V, xxviii, 1928, pp. 185 ffGoogle Scholar. describes and illustrates the remaining blocks in some detail and revises the texts of the quarry-marks; Bean, G. E., Aegean Turkey, London, 1966, pp. 145 fGoogle Scholar. and pl. 25.

4 The only literary reference to Teian marble appears to be that of Chrysostom, Dio (Orat., lxxix, 2Google Scholar), where Teos appears as one of a list of cities that have benefited by the possession of a supply of finely-coloured or variegated stones (λίθων ἐνχρόων καὶ ποικίλων). An incense-burner of Teian stone is recorded in an inscription from Smyrna, (Syll.,3 III, 996Google Scholar). On other supposed references see Ruge in RE., s.v. Teos, col. 568 f.

5 L. Bruzza, Annali dell' Instituto, 1870, p. 183, no. 182, cf. p. 146. With the benefit of hindsight, the similarity between Bruzza's no. 181 (on africano) and his no. 239 (on grey marble) might have suggested that the two came from the same group of quarries.