Source Image: PR103_01_15 of Penteli Quarries

· · · · ·

Increase Brightness Increase Contrast

Monochrome Sharpen

View Options Hide Annotations

Description

Carved slot in the Penteli Quarries (ancient Pentelikon)

Monument: Penteli Quarries
Monument Type: Quarry
Material(s): Pentelic Marble (Archaeometric identification)
Date: post bc 700 - pre ad 300
Keywords: Quarrying, Quarry Road
Collections: Penteli

Location

Original Location: Penteli

Evidence for working practices

1. Insert socket

Process: Transport
Description: This socket, adjacent to the road seen in PR103_01_11, is probably for a crane or a bollard which would have been used for lowering blocks down the hillside. A similar one is visible in PR103_01_12. The system used at these quarries seems to have been similar to the lizza used at Carrara until recently which involved blocks being lowered down the hillside on sledges, with the ropes controlling them wound around bollards set into the bedrock.

Notes

The quarries at Penteli near Athens, on the slopes of Mount Pentelikon, were used continually for well over a thousand years in antiquity and the area is being quarried again today. The site consists of several hundred extraction points. Pentelic marble is a fine white marble with a slightly golden tint.