Petrological characterisation of 'alabaster' from the Marib province in Yemen and its use as an ornamental stone in Sabaean culture

'Yemen alabaster', a calcareous sinter, is a unique building and ornamental stone of the Sabaean culture ( c. 1000 BC to 100 AD). This study characterises the quarries and describes the facies of their stones. Through thin sections, luminescence microscopy and geochemical analyses, 'Yemen alabaster' can be classified and assigned a quarry source. The stone is a calcareous sinter related to volcanism in the Marib province. It can be divided into several microfacies types different in luminescence and trace element contents. During Sabaean times it was mined in highly organised quarries including underground quarries and used extensively in the Sabaean kingdom.     

Fragmented Images: The Last Tomb Paintings of Tarquinia

Cultural decline as a result of the Roman conquest is usually invoked to explain the gradual disappearance of Tarquinian tomb paintings during the third century BC. By contrast, this paper argues that, first, the late tomb paintings of Tarquinia markedly differed from their predecessors by decorating individual burials (fragmentation), as opposed to entire chamber tombs, which should be seen as a culturally meaningful development in the iconographic approach towards representing the deceased; and that, second, the disappearance of this time‐honoured type of monument be seen as part of wider changes in the ways in which Tarquinian and other Etruscan elites chose to materialize their ideologies during the cultural and political realignments of the period of the Roman conquest.