Una litoteca digitale per i materiali dell’edilizia storica di Pisa

The article aims at providing a first digital geochemical and petrographic catalog of rocks quarried from the area of Monti Pisani and used in historical buildings in Pisa, from the Roman period up to the thirteenth century. The lithotheque is one of the results of a broader integrated study of ancient quarrying landscapes which has allowed a better understanding of the dynamics of supply and use of building materials in Pisa. The study of the archaeological evidence was associated with a series of surveys aimed at the documentation of quarry fronts as well as the collection of geological samples. Geochemical and petrographic analysis have been carried out on a large collection of reference materials, the results of which are made available as Open Data: for each sample analyzed, a descriptive sheet is provided that contains the geolocation of the outcrops, the characteristics of texture and autoptic observation of the sample structure, chemical maps describing the distribution of the main constituent elements of the rock (collected by portable X-ray fluorescence, pXRF) and the results of petrographic analysis, accompanied by photographic documentation of the sample both macroscopic and in thin section. The information collected constitutes a first reference dataset for future research on the exploitation of geological outcrops adjacent to the Pisa plain. In addition, the set is open to future implementations with data on materials from other geological contexts as well as ancient architectures or excavations.