THRACIAN HORSEMEN: A PROVENANCE STUDY OF MARBLE
FROM DOBRUDJA - ROMANIA

The ‘Thracian horseman' representation expresses the idea of a religious myth of the population living during the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the Greek colonies and Roman provinces on the Aegean and western Black Sea shores, including Dobrudja in Romania. The geographical distribution of ‘Thracian horseman' monuments is limited to the territory of Thracia and Moesia Inferior. Dobrudja, as part of Moesia Inferior, was quite familiar with the Thracian horseman cult.

Characterization of some ‘Thracian horsemen' from the Constantza Archaeological Museum was carried out by means of 13C and 18O isotope analysis and thin section analysis. The statistical treatment of the experimental data, using a Gaussian bivariate distribution function, shows the most confident provenance attributions among the quarries represented in a database based on the one initially produced by Herz (1987). The results indicate that most of the ‘Thracian horsemen' samples are made of Marmara (Proconnesus) marble, while some individual pieces find probable provenance matches with Iznik, Paros and Afyon. These results are consistent with a previous study of Roman and Byzantine objects from the same region (Pentia et al. 1999).

Herz, N. 1987. Carbon and oxygen isotopic ratios: a data base for Classical and Roman marble. Archaeometry 29: 35-43.
Pentia, M., Herz, N. & M. Seclaman. 1999. Marble provenance study of some Roman and Byzantine artifacts discovered in northern Dobrudja - Romania. In M. Schvoerer (ed.), Proceedings of ASMOSIA IV (Bordeaux, October 1995).