Peregrina marmora nella Venetia et Histria romana: diffusione e utilizzo di pietre lucidabili d’importazione nell’edilizia pubblica e privata tra I sec. a.C. e IV sec. d.C.

The aim of this research is the study of imported marbles used in Roman regio X Venetia et Histria’s buildings (1st century BC - 4th century AD). Literature highlights the need to have a complete and up-to-date summary of the attestations. For this reason a census of all the published data has been made for the area considered. The aim is to return a reference tool for studies on the subject, as well as a starting point for broader historical-archaeological and historical-economic reflections on the sites considered and their relations with the Mediterranean of the Roman age. Since the beginning of the research, a method was developed to manage the extreme heterogeneity in literature’s presented information. This led to the construction of an online database for data collection and management, in order to support the research as well as the compilation of the catalogue. The latter takes into account both marble artifacts’ original architectural complex, as well as the context of the pieces' layering, thus providing a way to make the necessary assessments about the degree of reliability of the indicators of the forms and chronology of use. The resulted census has thus been exploited as a starting point for reflecting on the routes of exchange and trade that, through the dense water network crisscrossing the region, placed the sites of regio X in close and direct contact with the Mediterranean routes, ensuring the supply of Greek, Micro-Asian, Egyptian, North African, and Gallic stones, as well as Italian stones, whose widespread distribution in Venetia et Histria strongly emerges from this study. The analysis also focused on the primary material and symbolic value attributed to peregrina marmora. This is so important that even smaller towns makes great economic efforts to embellish their buildings with imported marbles, through which they convey precise and multiple aesthetic and semantic values. Finally, the study has led to a diachronic analysis of the use of marble’s phenomenon, highlighting both its quite discrete precocity of diffusion and the evolution in materials and solutions’ choice over time.