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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2011
Recent discoveries of pebble mosaics in various settlements in southern Spain from the seventh to the fourth centuries B.C. reveal an early tradition in floor-making. These discoveries have thrown new light on the origins of the most commonly used floors in Roman times, opus signinum and opus tessellatum. The first technique, thought to be Italian in origin, was probably developed in Italy from previous experiments in other Mediterranean sites which were of Punic origin. The origin of tessellated floors has been widely discussed and, although they were being produced on a large scale in Italy towards the first century A.D., we can assume that there existed a long experimental stage prior to the Roman period in which two general types of mosaic floors were developed—those with a uniform surface and those formed with small elements.
1 In order to have a classification to work with I have accepted the terms current in archaeology despite the arbitrary nature of some of them. For the terminology of the subject, vide Gioseffi, D., ‘Terminología dei sistemi di pavimentazione nell Antichità’ in Mosaici in Aquileia e nell'Alto Adriatico (Udine, 1975), pp. 23–38.Google Scholar
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