On a Roman Cargo of Marmor Thasium: the Cala Cicala Shipwreck (Crotone, Italy)

In June 2017 a multi-departmental research group of the University of Calabria conducted some investigations on a marble cargo at Cala Cicala, located at a depth of approximately 6 meters along the southern section of the promontory of Capo Colonna (Cro-tone). The cargo is composed of 36 marble elements of various sizes, mostly pillars and blocks, of a total weight of about 180 tons. Many of the marble artefacts are stepped parallelepipeds, while the largest monoliths exceed 6 meters in length. During the Cala Cicala survey, the team experimented an innovative approach to study the underwater site using digital and mechatronic technolo-gies applied to conventional archaeological documentation in order to clean, document, and analyse the archaeological remains. The minero-petrographic investigations, conducted in collaboration with the IUAV University of Venice, made it possible to identify the marbles with those quarried at Aliki and at the Cape Vathy on the island of Thasos. More precise chronological data are given by some Ionic capitals and Attic marble bases, now on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Capo Colonna, discov-ered on the site of the shipwreck before 1929. The evidence found at Cala Cicala contributes significantly to our knowledge of many aspects of the exploitation of the quarries on the island of Thasos and on the manufacturing traditions of local marble workshops. Before these investigations, the only known underwater evidence of loads of Thasian marble was limited to the Apulian wrecks of San Pietro in Bevagna and Torre Sgarrata which seem to be more recent than the wreck of Cala Cicala. The quality of marble from the promontory of Aliki, a variety predominantly used for architectural applications, was never found before in other ship-wrecks.