Contributo allo studio del tetto marmoreo di Selinunte: nuove acquisizioni e indagini archeometriche

One of the most remarkable architectural works of Selinus is the marble roof found in fragments in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century on the acropolis. These fragments are dated to the second quarter of the fifth century BC and are preserved in the Regional Archaeological Museum "Antonino Salinas" of Palermo, where some of them are exhibited and attributed to Temple A. This paper is based on the archaeological and archaeometric study of a series of other marble fragments found in the excavations of the Superintendence of Western Sicily in the second half of the twentieth century that are kept in the storerooms of the Archaeological Park of Selinus. The new pieces allow us to gain a better understanding of the roof, to identify some remains of its acroteria and make a new hypothesis about the building to which the roof belonged. Their archaeometric investigation, consisting of minero-petrographic (PXRD, OM on thin section) and of C & O isotopic analyses (SIRA), allowed the determination of the provenance of all the new fragments from the Lakkoi-Thapsana open-pit quarries in the island of Paros (Greece), and the comparison of the results obtained with those of the fragments kept in Palermo points to a common origin of the marble blocks used for the roof.