THE ANCIENT NAXIAN MARBLE QUARRIES The ancient marble quarries at inland Melanes and at Apollonas in the Northeast corner of the island have been known to archaeologists since the first half of the 18th century. Recent finds, which yield...
moreTHE ANCIENT NAXIAN MARBLE QUARRIES
The ancient marble quarries at inland Melanes and at Apollonas in the Northeast corner of the island have been known to archaeologists since the first half of the 18th century. Recent finds, which yield a closer dating and enable us to study the character and productivity of the quarries, make a new discussion of the whole subject worthwhile.
The Melanes quarries were first opened by the end of the 7th cent. B. C. at the latest. This is clear from one of the unfinished kouroi found in the Melanes era, which is datable to that time (fig. 1 0). The quarries continued to be exploited at least until the time of Lygdamis (540-524 B.C.), which is the date also of the unfinished threshold at the Melanes quarries, which was designed for the Apollo temple at Palatia in Naxos. Evidence for the opening of the Apollonas quarries would seem to be slightly later. They were functioning already by around the middle of the 6th cent. B.C., to judge by the well known unfinished kouros in the National Museum of Athens, no. 14 (fig. 15) and its stilistic relation to the Naxian kouros torso in Berlin. Both figures seem to have been products of the same workshop established close to the Apollonas quarries.
The Apollonas quarries continued to be worked down to the end of the Archaic period, a date provided by the colossal statue of Dionysos lying there where it was abandoned (fig. 11). Naxian sculpture however makes its appearance as early as the middle of the 7th cent. B.C. – perhaps in connection with the Melanes quarries. That it continues to be produced on into the Christian era is shown by some unpublished sculptures in the Naxos Museum and by a number of Naxian buildings in the island.
The use of Parian and Thasian marble for sculpture evidently begun almost as early as did the use of Naxian marble, yet their use appears to be sporadic, and restricted in comparison to the exportation and wide use of the Naxian product in the 7th and first half of the 6th cent. B.C. During that time, Naxian marble was used not only in Naxos, but also in other archaic Greek workshops (Samos, Attica, Argos, Cyclades, Greek colonies of the West). It is probably because of its quality and for historical reasons that Naxian marble disappears from the Greek marble "market" after the Archaic period.
These facts considered together with the unfinished architectural members and two other marble objects (figs. 8-9) found in the Melanes quarries, show that the Naxian quarries were in permanent use and not opened exclusively in connection with the colossal kouroi found in situ (figs. 3, 4, 11). A preliminary survey of the Melanes and Apollonas quarries confirms the high productivity and the permanent character of the Naxian quarries. Both sites have a great number of quarring pits with the characteristic ancient quarring marks, dispersed over wide areas and lying close to each other. This is typical of surface or horizontal exploitation of marble as opposed to the deep and heavy or vertical exploitation known from other ancient Greek quarries (Pentelicon, Docimion etc.). The absence of installations usual in the quarries (shrines, settlements, workshop-installations) is probably a result of the extension of the modern village of Apollonas into the ancient quarry sites. This same lack at Melanes may be due to the fact that there has as yet been no systematic survey there.
