Abstract

Numerical data on scientific analytical characteristics of the Alpine marbles are presented in this paper in order to provide a database for future use when investigating artefacts of that region. The Alpine marbles used already in Roman times can be subdivided into two major groups. Those of the first group, bound to the “Koralpe-Wölz-System”, are medium to coarsegrained white marbles usually of good to excellent quality. Well-known quarries of this group are e.g. Gummern or the Slovenian Pohorje/Bachern marbles. The degree of discrimination of these marbles from each other is very bad when only stable isotope analysis is applied. However, by using discrimination analysis and computing a large set of analytical variables a separation of the datafields of these quarries can be improved considerably.The marbles of the second group from the “Drauzug-Gurktal-System”, the “Pörtschach marbles”, are visually indistinguishable but they are significantly different in their petrological and chemical characteristics. Thus they can safely be assigned to their source.The data presented in the “Supplementary Material” are intended to supply a databank for further marble provenance analysis of artefacts to be checked against Alpine marbles. For the sake of comparability, the methods of analysis of a sample to be investigated have to be in strict compliance with the analytical methods that were used for the preparation of this databank.

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