Micropetrography as a Key Preliminary Tool for Addressing Provenance Issues: Insights from a Roman Istria Case Study (Croatia)

The Istrian peninsula in western Croatia has surface deposits that consist mostly of Jurassic and Cretaceous carbonate sedimentary rocks, which have been exploited since prehistory. Under Roman rule, this exploitation intensified, as attested by dozens of quarries documented throughout the peninsula. Stone was used for everything from foundations of private houses to funerary monuments and public buildings. Micropetrography can be used to determine the geological age of the stone used in these structures, to then compare the results with a geological database of Roman quarries. As multiple quarries exploited deposits of the same age, however, micropetrography alone is insufficient to determine provenance, so it must be supplemented by transport and profitability analysis.