Publisher's Synopsis
The site of Palmyra, an oasis city in the Syrian desert located at a cultural and geographical crossroads, was a major trading centre in the first three centuries ad. This volume offers an in-depth exploration into one type of trade and its economy, namely that of stone, and the crucial role that this played within the settlement. The papers gathered here explore different aspects of stone, from its use in Palmyra's famous funerary portraiture, the production techniques that underlay these works, and their polychromy, through to where and how marble and limestone were provenanced, quarried, and transported, and what this implies for our understanding of the organization of the stone trade in both Syria and beyond.
