Lapis Sarcophagus and the provenance of its mediterranean Sarcophagi.

Pliny speaks of the stone of Assus in the Troad as suitable for making sarcophagi due to its special property of consuming the buried bodies within 40 days. This belief was at the basis of the production of a large number of sarcophagi in the II and III centuries and their export to several Mediterranean towns. In a previous archaeometric research it was demonstrated that such sarcophagi could have been made not only from the andesite of Assos, but also from others outcropping on the island of Lesbos and at Pergamum. The present study has completed an initial mineropetrographic and geochemical database of the quarries and outcrops and subjected samples from 27 sarcophagi found at Thessalonica, Lesbos (Mytilene and Methymna), Tyre, Alexandria (Egypt), Durres and Ravenna to the same laboratory methodologies (OM, XRD, XRF, ICP). The results indicate that Assos is a confirmed source, Lesbos is a possibility for some sarcophagi, while Pergamum can be excluded.