Rubber marble
The rubber marble is a medium to coarse-grained marble that is quarried northwest of Villach , Carinthia in Austria . The deposit has been used by the Romans since around the 1st century.
Rock description and occurrence
The rubber marble is light gray to white. The marble crystals can be seen with the naked eye. This marble was created during the Devonian approximately 350–400 million years ago. Multiple crystallization processes gave this rock high strength and a high degree of whiteness.
The occurrence of the Gummern marble belongs to a marble stock that is embedded in the old crystalline mass of the foothills of the Millstätter Alps (mica slate and slate gneisses). The Gummern Marble was created through a rock metamorphosis at depths of 5 to 15 kilometers under great pressure and temperatures of 250 to 500 ° C.
Roman quarry
In the ancient Roman quarries Gummerner instruments were found in iron: A cocked hat , a pick hammer, sledge hammers , blow iron , splitting wedges and thin iron supplement plates (called springs), which improved the gap direction and effect. The rough stones were from the Roman stone crushers in Schramverfahren won, while the rough stones were cut free from the side with the above tools and split off on its underside.
use
The Gummern marble has been mined by OMYA GesmbH in Gummern since 1975 . It is the most important marble quarry in Carinthia. This marble is rarely used for stone production, but mainly ground into marble powder, which is used in the paper, paint, lacquer and plastic industries.
The rubber marble was already used in Roman antiquity for the production of stone monuments. In the Roman city on the Magdalensberg , which is about 50 kilometers from Gummern, this marble was used for grave stelae. In a study it turned out that in the entire Carinthian area the marble material from the quarry of Gummern used by the Romans clearly dominated. The marble is also likely to have been used beyond the Carinthian region, for example the Cantius stele found in Graz was probably made of rubber marble.
An interesting modern design made of rubber marble can be found in the parish church of Wölfnitz , where the altar, ambo and baptismal font were made from this marble.
Web links
- Metal extraction and quarries in Noricum
- Information summary of the results of the FWF project "Marbles of Roman Quarries and Stone Monuments in Styria and in Stajerska"
- Information on omya / web / omya at.nsf
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stones for the Iuvavum area. Rubber marble on the website chc.sbg.ac.at ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved June 12, 2010.
- ↑ Robert Konopasek: Spitzelofen, a Roman quarry in Carinthia. S. 51. In: res montanarum 38/2006.
- ↑ Alexandra Steiner: South Norse grave elements and their marble, Frankfurter Electronic Rundschau zur Altertumskunde 1 (2006) (PDF; 386 kB). Retrieved June 12, 2010.
- ↑ Erich Hudeczek: The Roman stone collection of the Landesmuseum Joanneum . A guide through the lapidary. Ed .: Landesmuseum Joanneum. Graz 2004, p. 18th f .
Coordinates: 46 ° 39 ′ 24.7 " N , 13 ° 47 ′ 34.2" E