The source of marble for a statue of Apollo, known as the Colossus of the Naxians, on the Greek island of Delos, has been a mystery to art historians and archaeologists for decades, the Geological Society of America (GSA) noted in a news release, adding that the stone’s chemistry pointed geochemists to the southern end of the nearby island of Naxos, but no one thought there were ancient marble quarries there. A geoarchaeologist believes he has found the source.
“We had actually been told that we were not going to find what we were looking for,” said geoarchaeologist Scott Pike of Willamette University in Salem, OR. But after two field seasons searching across Mediterranean shrubland, Pike believes he found the source. He presented his findings, titled Finding Apollo’s Marbles: Rediscovery of a White Marble Source in Southern Naxos, Greece, on October 11 at the Geological Society of America’s GSA Connects 2021 annual meeting in Portland, OR.
The Greek Archaic period (approximately 800 to 480 BC) is known in part for its “larger-than-life” kouros statues, which depicted young men. Together, the massive Apollo kouros on Delos would stand around ten meters (33 feet) high, although today it is broken into several parts. The massive marble chunks are white and worn; at a glance, some of the pieces hardly resemble parts of a human figure. But the statue has drawn researchers all the same. Searching for its source was sparked in part by an ambiguous inscription at its base, roughly translated as, “I am of the same stone, statue and plinth,” with a later addition stating that the kouros was “from the Naxians to Apollo,” according to Pike.
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