Abstract
Adnet ‘Marble’ and Untersberg ‘Marble’ from Salzburg federal state and Leitha Limestone from eastern Austria are proposed for designation as Global Heritage Stone Resource. The mainly reddish and grayish Adnet ‘Marble’ limestone comprises a wide range of variants and stratigraphic units which belong to the Upper Triassic reef limestones and the Early Jurassic limestones from the Adnet Group. Its use during the Middle Ages and Modern times follows the traditions from antiquity of using red stones to express imperial and ecclesiastic power. The pale cream, rose to gray yellow, massive and very dense Untersberg ‘Marble’ limestone is a fine to medium grained (partially breccious) arenite that belongs to the Upper Cretaceous Gosau Group. It was the most prominent statuary limestone within Central Europe. The Untersberg ‘Marble’ has been mined since Roman times at several quarries and used mainly for decorative purposes. The ivory colored porous Leitha Limestone (Leithakalk) of Middle Miocene age (about 12–16 million years) is mainly made up of calcareous red algae. It has been a prominent material for buildings and statues from Roman times until the invention of reinforced concrete. Famous quarry districts in eastern Austria, e.g. in parts of the Leitha Mountains, Ruster Hills and east of Leibnitz provided the essential resources for representative buildings, most prominently those in Vienna. St. Margarethener Kalksandstein from Burgenland and Aflenzer Sandstein (former Aflenzer Muschelkalk) from southern Styria are still being quarried.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Clemens Deisl (Marmor-Industrie Kiefer GmbH), H. Petrasch (Steinindustrie Ernst Grein GmbH), K. Jüliger (G. Hummel GmbH & Co KG). Mag. Kurt Schaller is thanked posthumously for creating the database http://www.historic-quarries.org and http://chc.sbg.ac.at/sri/thesaurus/.
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Moshammer, B., Uhlir, C., Rohatsch, A., Unterwurzacher, M. (2015). Adnet ‘Marble’, Untersberg ‘Marble’ and Leitha Limestone—Best Examples Expressing Austria’s Physical Cultural Heritage. In: Lollino, G., Manconi, A., Guzzetti, F., Culshaw, M., Bobrowsky, P., Luino, F. (eds) Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09048-1_49
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