Geological Characterization of the Marble Commercial Varieties Outcropping in the Frigido Valley (Apuan Alps, Italy)
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Geological Characterization of the Marble Commercial Varieties Outcropping in the Frigido Valley (Apuan Alps, Italy) Giovanni Massa 1 & Diego Pieruccioni 2 Received: 22 September 2019 / Accepted: 10 June 2020 # The European Association for Conservation of the Geological Heritage 2020
Abstract The Apuan Alps are studied by several authors since the nineteenth century for the presence of important geoheritage mainly represented by metamorphic polydeformed rocks, polymetallic mineralizations and large outcrops of precious natural stones. The Apuan Alps marble is a typology of ornamental stone that is worldwide known for decoration and building purposes as well as for the excellent physical-mechanical properties. This paper aims at improving the knowledge of geology, petrography and microstructures of the marble commercial variety of the Apuan Alps. In particular, this study investigated the Frigido Valley (NW Tuscany, Italy) and its nine stone-work basins: Brugiana, Capraia, Madielle, Rocchetta, Gioia, Valsora, Piastramarina, Piastreta and Forno. Seven marble commercial varieties were identified (namely white, ordinary, veined, grey, “Arabesque-like”, Calacatta and Seravezza Breccias) from these basins, corresponding to more than fifty local names according to the current nomenclature used by the workers during the exploitation work and trading. Keywords Marble . Commercial varieties . Calcite microfabric . Apuan Alps . Georesources
Introduction Apuan Alps marbles are considered among the most popular ornamental stones in the world. They are selected by designers and artists to decorate the most famous art heritage sites. The wide use of this ornamental stone is due both to its aesthetic characteristics and to its superb physical-mechanical properties acquired during the Alpine orogenesis. Moreover, in the last decade, also marble production waste found a useful application as beach fill material (e.g. Bertoni et al. 2012, 2016). For these reasons, Apuan Alps marbles have been subjected to many geological, mineralogical, geochemical and petrographical studies (e.g. Coli 1989; Meloni et al. 1995; Molli and Heilbronner 1999; Attanasio et al. 2000; Molli et al. 2000; Leiss and Molli 2003; Carmignani et al. 2005; Meccheri et al. 2007a, b; Oesterling et al. 2007; Carmignani et al. 2017) as well as in many rock-deformation experiments (e.g. * Diego Pieruccioni [email protected] 1
CGT-Centro di GeoTecnologie, Università di Siena, Via Vetri Vecchi 34, 52027 San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy
2
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Pisa, Via S. Maria 53, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Schmid et al. 1987; Wenk et al. 1987; Fredrich et al. 1989; Rutter 1995; Covey-Crump 1998; Leiss and Weiss 2000; Pieri et al. 2001; De Bresser et al. 2005; Delle Piane and Burlini 2008). Exploiting activity in the Apuan Alps, and first marble artefacts, dates back to the Etruscans in the second half of the sixth century B.C. (Bruschi et al. 2004; Bartelletti and Cantisani 2011; Amorfini et al. 2015), although the ex
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