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only by road, was the next most probable destination, and from there heavy stone loads
would have eventually reached the Meander, having covered nearly 150 km over land.
Because the marble quarries of Laodicea and Aphrodisias were close to the Meander (Fig.
50), Ephesus or Miletus could have served as a redistribution hub for products from
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different quarries. 318 Pensabene’s theory is supported by H. Dodge, who notes that an edict
of the second century A.D. suggests Ephesus as a port of departure for marble items. 319 L.
Antoninus Balbus, proconsul for Asia, ordered “importers of wood and marble not to leave
them or saw them up on the wharves.” 320 From a nautical perspective, these cities are also
much more convenient for points of departure to the West, since they face the Cycladic
Islands and Greece: departing from one of these harbors would have saved some 500 km of
navigation through the Dardanelles and along the rocky Turkish coastline.
Even without knowing for sure what the final collecting hub was, the description
given so far explains why the cost of Docimian marble was so much higher compared to
Proconnesian: overland transportation significantly increased its final cost. 321 This might
help explain why the Punta Scifo A shipwreck's artifacts were exported in a semi-finished
state. Given the high cost of transportation, it made good economic sense to add value to
the objects by working them at the quarries, simultaneously lowering the weight of
material that had to be carried across kilometers of difficult terrain.
318 Pensabene 1978a, 113.
319 Dodge 1992, in: Ward-Perkins 1992b, 67, n. 25.
320 Dodge 1992, in: Ward-Perkins 1992b, 67, n. 25; Robert 1962, 35.
321 Greene 1986, 39-40.