Patrimonio culturale sommerso lungo le coste del Salento: il carico delle naves lapidariae

Apulia, with its over eight hundred kilometres of coasts, where lower and sandy spaces alternate with high and jagged slopes, has always been a fortunate landfall for ships. In the imperial period, between the II and the III century a. C., rich buyers called on famous oriental artisans to order sarcophagi, sculptures and relieves in precious marble. The transport was committed to naves lapidariae that loaded sarcophagi, columns, capitals, architectonic ornaments, which were hardly worked, unfinished and to be completed in the arrival places by travelling skilled workers or local stonecutters. On the other hand routes to Rome, but for the others Mediterranean ports too, are proved by the wrecks of the ships that were hurled into the seabed by storms. These wrecks with a shipment of stone material especially (so naves lapidariae) are scattered along the seabed of the Ionic coastal of Salento and more precisely in the waters of Torre Chianca (Porto Cesareo, Lecce), San Pietro in Bevagna (Manduria, Taranto) and Torre Sgarrata (Pulsano, Taranto). In this essay we analyse and catalogue the ancient marbles of the sarcophagi and the columns that have been found out in the seabed of the Ionic coastal. Finally we are going to display the implementation of these data in a GIS (Geographical Information System).