Provenancing of ancient Roman millstones

Twenty samples of millstones made from volcanic lavarecovered from two Roman villa sites in southern Italy, covering the period IInd/Ist century BC, have been analyzed by instrumental neutron activation using the SLOWPOKE reactor at the University of Toronto. Also included in the studies were three samples of lava from an extinct volcano located in the same region. Findings are compared with published data on trace element compositions from a number of Mediterranean volcanic sources. Results show the provenance of the millstones to be from two different Italian sources.