Iasos di Caria e il rilancio del suo porto in età bizantina: il ruolo del marmo

Placed inside one of the deep inlets indenting the Carian Coast, Iasos knew a period of economic prosperity in Justinian times, thanks to the increased demand of the polychrome marble quarried locally. At that time the marble, extracted from the nearby reliefs, was used mainly in revetment slabs. These were used in open book compositions which embellished many imperial buildings. The marbles were sawn into slabs in the quadriporticus of the mausoleum of the 2nd century A.D. placed nearby the East harbor. In that building, placed close to the aqueduct, were found numerous marble blocks, showing saw traces, abandoned over thick emery layers. The East harbor seems therefore the starting place for the marble artifacts diffusion, ascertained on eastern Mediterranean shores and Italy. At the time probably the quarries were imperial properties; so it is likely that here worked also Constantinopolitan stonemasons. These exchanges with Constantinople brought in Iasos the coloristic taste typical of the period: this is attested by the agora basilica, where, in the Justinian age, different kinds of marble were used, some maybe imported from the capital