Marble

marble, granular limestone or dolomite (i.e., rock composed of calcium-magnesium carbonate) that has been recrystallized under the influence of heat, pressure, and aqueous solutions. Commercially, it includes all decorative calcium-rich rocks that can be polished, as well as certain serpentines (verd antiques).

Petrographically marbles are massive rather than thin-layered and consist of a mosaic of calcite grains that rarely show any traces of crystalline form under the microscope. They are traversed by minute cracks that accord with the rhombohedral cleavage (planes of fracture that intersect to yield rhombic forms) of calcite. In the more severely deformed rocks, the grains show stripes and may be elongated in a particular direction or even crushed.

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Marbles often occur interbedded with such metamorphic rocks as mica schists, phyllites, gneisses, and granulites and are most common in the older layers of Earth’s crust that have been deeply buried in regions of extreme folding and igneous intrusion. The change from limestones rich in fossils into true marbles in such metamorphic regions is a common phenomenon; occasionally, as at Carrara, Italy, and at Bergen, Norway, recrystallization of the rock has not completely obliterated the organic structures.

Most of the white and gray marbles of Alabama, Georgia, and western New England, and that from Yule, Colorado, are recrystallized rocks, as are a number of Greek and Italian statuary marbles famous from antiquity, which are still quarried. These include the Parian marble, the Pentelic marble of Attica in which Phidias, Praxiteles, and other Greek sculptors executed their principal works, and the snow-white Carrara marble used by Michelangelo and Antonio Canova and favoured by modern sculptors. The exterior of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is of Tennessee marble, and the Lincoln Memorial contains marbles from Yule, Colorado, Alabama (roof transparencies), and Georgia (Lincoln statue).

metamorphic marble

Even the purest of the metamorphic marbles, such as that from Carrara, contain some accessory minerals, which, in many cases, form a considerable proportion of the mass. The commonest are quartz in small rounded grains, scales of colourless or pale-yellow mica (muscovite and phlogopite), dark shining flakes of graphite, iron oxides, and small crystals of pyrite.

Many marbles contain other minerals that are usually silicates of lime or magnesia. Diopside is very frequent and may be white or pale green; white bladed tremolite and pale-green actinolite also occur; the feldspar encountered may be a potassium variety but is more commonly a plagioclase (sodium-rich to calcium-rich) such as albite, labradorite, or anorthite. Scapolite, various kinds of garnet, vesuvianite, spinel, forsterite, periclase, brucite, talc, zoisite, wollastonite, chlorite, tourmaline, epidote, chondrodite, biotite, titanite, and apatite are all possible accessory minerals. Pyrrhotite, sphalerite, and chalcopyrite also may be present in small amounts.

These minerals represent impurities in the original limestone, which reacted during metamorphism to form new compounds. The alumina represents an admixture of clay; the silicates derive their silica from quartz and from clay; the iron came from limonite, hematite, or pyrite in the original sedimentary rock. In some cases the original bedding of the calcareous sediments can be detected by mineral banding in the marble. The silicate minerals, if present in any considerable amount, may colour the marble; e.g., green in the case of green pyroxenes and amphiboles; brown in that of garnet and vesuvianite; and yellow in that of epidote, chondrodite, and titanite. Black and gray colours result from the presence of fine scales of graphite.

Bands of calc-silicate rock may alternate with bands of marble or form nodules and patches, sometimes producing interesting decorative effects, but these rocks are particularly difficult to finish because of the great difference in hardness between the silicates and carbonate minerals.

Later physical deformation and chemical decomposition of the metamorphic marbles often produces attractive coloured and variegated varieties. Decomposition yields hematite, brown limonite, pale-green talc, and, in particular, the green or yellow serpentine derived from forsterite and diopside, which is characteristic of the ophicalcites or verd antiques. Earth movements may shatter the rocks, producing fissures that are afterward filled with veins of calcite; in this way the beautiful brecciated, or veined, marbles are produced. Sometimes the broken fragments are rolled and rounded by the flow of marble under pressure.

The so-called onyx marbles consist of concentric zones of calcite or aragonite deposited from cold-water solutions in caves and crevices and around the exits of springs. They are, in the strict sense, neither marble nor onyx, for true onyx is a banded chalcedony composed largely of silicon dioxide. Onyx marble was the “alabaster” of the ancients, but alabaster is now defined as gypsum, a calcium sulfate rock. These marbles are usually brown or yellow because of the presence of iron oxide. Well-known examples include the giallo antico (“antique yellow marble”) of the Italian antiquaries, the reddish-mottled Siena marble from Tuscany, the large Mexican deposits at Tecali near Mexico City and at El Marmol, California, and the Algerian onyx marble used in the buildings of Carthage and Rome and rediscovered near Oued-Abdallah in 1849.

Unmetamorphosed limestones showing interesting colour contrasts or fossil remains are used extensively for architectural purposes. The Paleozoic rocks (from 251 million to 542 million years in age) of Great Britain, for example, include “madrepore marbles” rich in fossil corals and “encrinital marble” containing crinoid stem and arm plates with characteristic circular cross sections. The shelly limestones of the Purbeck Beds, England, and the Sussex marble, both of Mesozoic Era (from 251 million to 65.5 million years ago), consist of masses of shells of freshwater snails embedded in blue, gray, or greenish limestone. They were a favourite material of medieval architects and may be seen in Westminster Abbey and a number of English cathedrals. Black limestones containing bituminous matter, which commonly emit a fetid odour when struck, are widely used; the well-known petit granit of Belgium is a black marble containing crinoid stem plates, derived from fossil echinoderms (invertebrate marine animals).