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Table 20. Percentages of shipwrecked marble carriers discovered in the Mediterranean,
arranged by country.
Country of
Discovery
Shipwrecks
#
Percentage
%
Italy 19 58%
France 4 12%
Turkey 4 12%
Greece 3 9%
Croatia 1 3%
Intern. Waters 1 3%
Tunisia 1 3%
Total 33 100%
Another result of this analysis deals with the chronological confines of marble exports. As
seen in Table 21, there are no cargoes that predate the first century B.C. (with the possible
exception of the Kızılburun wreck), and no known cargoes after the sixth century A.D.
Moreover, the marble carriers lost in the third century A.D. represent 40% of the total.
When combined with other carriers of the first and second centuries A.D., that number
jumps to a staggering 70%, suggesting that the maritime marble trade was primarily a
phenomenon of the Roman Empire.
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It is evident that at the peak of the Roman Empire there was a veritable explosion in
the trade of marble never before seen on such a scale, and not seen again in the following
centuries. In the second and third centuries A.D. the Mediterranean basin had become a
pacified, united Roman lake, and the safety of sea lanes made long-distance trade
economically feasible. The pax Romana had created a world in which it was cheaper to
transport grain by sea “from one end of the Mediterranean to the other