The Marmo al Mare Project (MMP) established by J. Clayton Fant and Simon J. Barker is a new project examining marble-use in the wider Vesuvian area. The principal object of our project is to undertake the first comprehensive study of the lithic decoration for the most prominent élite houses within the Vesuvian area. It is hoped that the project will enrich the understanding of the décor of seaside dwellings, while providing new reconstructions of their lithic decorative schemes and their changes over time. The first stage of the project concentrates on the Villa Arianna (and the so-called secondo complesso) and the Villa San Marco at Stabiae (modern Castellammare di Stabia).

The second stage will see the project move to Pompeii and Herculaneum. For every site examined we intend to undertake a complete survey of the overall marble-use, including but not limited to marble thresholds, pavements, wall crustae and finto marmo. The project also seeks to create new methodologies related to the quantification of marble varieties and prestige levels, especially with regard to recording and analyzing the use of marble in pavements with inserts, which occur not only at Stabiae but also in many of the houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum and are often only cursorily documented. Through the detailed recording of these floors – assessing the density, size and quality of pieces – we hope to be able to identify differences within a single pavement as well as variation between pavements at different sites and from different periods. Overall our aim is to identify the individual modalities available to the mosaicist in planning the layout of these kinds of pavements. Furthermore, we anticipate that determining the quarry identification of white and polychrome marbles used will expand our knowledge of marble-use within the area and of the overall marble trade within Italy during the first centuries BC and AD.