Proconnesus
About
Marble cut from this Sea of Marmara island loaded straight onto ships at the harbor of Saraylar, sparing haulers a single mile of overland cartage. The quarries span more than 40 square kilometers, among the largest worked surfaces in the ancient marble trade. Extraction had run since the Archaic period, but demand from Rome pushed production to its Roman-era height, with 117 CE falling in the middle of that centuries-long boom.
What happened here
The rock is worked in benches from the top down, so that gravity does the moving. Channels are cut around a block with a pick, then it is split from the bed with iron wedges driven into a line of holes, sometimes with wooden wedges soaked to swell. Blocks are dressed roughly on the spot — no one hauls waste — and marked with the quarry, the gang, the date and the consular year, which is how the empire keeps track of what it owns. Sledges, rollers and ox teams take them to a river or the sea, because moving stone overland is the expensive part. Fine marbles are imperial monopolies. Abandoned faces still show the last unfinished cut, stopped mid-job and never resumed.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →