To My Family and Uğraş Uzun - Bilkent University

specially for carrying marble, which worked on a contractual basis, a common
practice in the Empire (Ward-Perkins, 1980: 335; Dodge, 1991: 32).
The use of Docimeum marble for Asiatic columnar sarcophagi has already
been proved by both stylistic studies (Koch and Sichtermann, 1982; Koch, 2001),
and the evidence of recent scientific tests. One of these tests is based on
determining the ratios of isotopes of carbon and oxygen using a mass spectometer
(Walker, 1984: 206). Samples from the same quarry tend to cluster in this test and
an isotopic map of the quarry can be formed (Herz and Wenner, 1981: 19). One
example of the isotopic tests made concerns the several fragments of columnar
sarcophagi in the British Museum reconstructed by H. Wiegartz into a single
sarcophagus (Wiegartz, 1965: Taf. 1). This test has revealed that some of the
fragments are from different parts of the Docimeum quarries, and not belong to a
single sarcophagus (Coleman and Walker, 1979: 109-11; Walker, 1984: 207-17).
3.2 Docimeum Columnar Sarcophagi
It has been disputed whether Docimeum supplied only raw marble, or if it
was also the production centre for finished or half-finished products such as
columnar sarcophagi. Waelkens was one of the scholars who argued that
Docimeum actually produced finished marble products. He suggested that the
flourishing local society in the 2 nd and the beginning of the 3 rd centuries could
have formed an appropriate environment for the production of sarcophagi
(Waelkens, 1982: 105). One piece of evidence he used to support his argument
was a limestone plaque in the Konya Museum (Hall and Waelkens, 1982). The
plaque is inscribed in Greek with the name of two brothers, Limnaios and
Diomedes, who were “carvers of statues from the marbles of Dokimeion” (Hall
15