Mezzi, vie e tempi del trasporto della pietra nell'Alto Adriatico in età romana: il caso di Aquileia

In the Upper Adriatic regions in the Roman age the building materials were traded by means of overland routes but especially of water routes. Until now, lots of shipwrecks with stone and brick cargoes have been found in this region, but the routes, the tonnage of the ships, the way of transhipment and the timings of this trade remain still undefined. It’s now possible to analyse part of these technical aspects of ancient trade thanks to the results of archaeometrical studies made by the University of Padua on the stones quarried in the Venetia et Histria region, which have let to define the distribution frame of the different lithotypes used at regional and local level. By means of the analysis of the case study of Aquileia, using published and unpublished data, this paper aims at reconstructing the types of vehicles, the timing of transportation and the quantity of stone used to pave the urban streets of one of the most important cities of Northern Italy at the beginning of the Imperial Age.