Determination of provenance of marbles used in Mediterranean area

The determination of the geographic origin of marbles used in the antiquity can be realized by separating of grains and by analyzing them one by one. For this purpose an automatic method of segmentation on previously digitalized images has been used. A series of data and parameters of petrogenetical significance applied on isolated grains enabled us to classify various types of marbles. The discriminant analysis used for classification yielded the perfect separation within the groups representing eight different quarries in the Mediterranean used in the Greek and Roman periods. The results of two archaeological samples from Ampurias in Spain indicated marbles from Pentelicon and Paros, respectively, which was also identified by petrographical methods.