Alabaster is great for building statues, artworks and monuments. That is a fact which did not change since medieval times. The question is, where the medieval and Renaissance sculptors in Europe got their alabaster from? W. Kloppmann et al. (2017) show that isotope fingerprints of the alabaster can link artworks to their source areas. The method benefits i.a. “from the strong variations of isotope ratios of S, O, Sr in seawater and the associated evaporites through the Mesozoic”. That means that, although optically there is no difference between different alabster peices, every alabaster quarry (“mine”) differs in its mixture of S, O and Sr isotopes. In order to test this new method for finding the origin of alabaster, W. Kloppmann et al. analyzed 66 alabster artworks from different museums and collections. They were able to show that besides the known alabaster quarries in the English Midlands and in northern Spain, there was also a long-lived but little-documented alabaster trade radiating from the French Alps.
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