Provenance of chalk tesserae from Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight, UK

Thin section petrographical analysis of chalk tesserae at Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight, England, identifies a range of planktonic foraminifera and the calcareous algal cyst Pithonella that identify the Late Cenomanian Rotalipora cushmani Biozone (BGS Foraminiferal Biozones 4iii to 7). The loca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Geologists' Association
Main Authors: Tasker, Alison, Wilkinson, Ian P., Fulford, Michael G., Williams, Mark
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/16093/
https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/16093/1/Tasker_Tesserae_PGEOLA-D-11-00010R1.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00167878
Description
Summary:Thin section petrographical analysis of chalk tesserae at Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight, England, identifies a range of planktonic foraminifera and the calcareous algal cyst Pithonella that identify the Late Cenomanian Rotalipora cushmani Biozone (BGS Foraminiferal Biozones 4iii to 7). The local chalk crop to the north of the villa includes rocks of R. cushmani Biozone age, and indicates a likely local, rather than long distance, source for the tesserae. Microfossils provide a powerful tool for identifying the provenance of artefacts in Roman Britain