The mosaics of the Roman Domus of Villa San Pancrazio in Taormina (ME): iconographic, stylistic features and characterization of the elements

This contribution deals with preliminary results from the study on the mosaics discovered at the Domus of the Roman age of Villa San Pancrazio in Taormina (ME), object of excavations since 2016 by the DiCam of the University of Messina, in collaboration with the CNR-IBAM of Catania and the Superintendency of Messina. The stratigraphic, stylistic and iconographic analysis of the floors was accompanied by the use of archaeometric techniques, carried out by the Department of Analytical Chemistry, University of the Basque Country and by the CHIBIOFARAM Department of the University of Messina. The aim is to define the issues linked to the composition, origin and supply of raw materials, to the study of production techniques and installation of the tesserae, probably to be attributed to local workers, the processes of conservation and degradation of the floors, after the abandonment of housing. Preliminary archaeometric investigations on the tesserae have been carried out by means of a non-destructive analytical methodology. For the characterization, micro X-ray fluorescence (µ-XRF) analysis was employed to acquire semi-quantitative elemental data together with a combination of Raman spectroscopy and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) that was used for the collection of molecular and structural information. In addition, the µ-XRF data of the black samples were analyzed by chemometric tools, to assess their volcanic nature and origin. The results of the black tesserae were compared to the elemental analysis of samples coming from Etna, Aeolian islands, Campi Flegrei, Vesuvio and Roman provinces reported in the book “Plio-quaternary Volcanism in Italy” by means of unsupervised Principal Component Analysis (PCA).