Non-Invasive Study on the Sinope Gospels

A major problem now hampering increased recycling of old cardboard containers (OCC), is the presence of significant amounts of polymeric materials such as adhesives, tapes, labels and wax which enter the pulp process stream along with the cardboard and paper that was collected for recycling. Many of these materials contain very fine particles of inorganic fillers and pigments. These various contaminant constituents combine in some, as yet unknown, manner to form an extremely gummy material that deposits on paper machine surfaces and sticks tenaciously (hence the term “Stickies”). The sticky blobs are very difficult to remove and increases machine downtime and maintenance costs as well as causing blemishes on the finished container board product Light optical image analysis, UV fluorescence, FTIR and electron microscopy are being used in consort with particle size measuring instruments, TGS and DSC thermal analysis techniques, FTIR infra-red spectroscopy as well as XRF (x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy ), XPS (x-ray photo emission spectroscopy) and classical contact angle determination methods as part of a broad program to characterize the physical and chemical nature of stickies in pulp slurries with the goal of removing them or alleviating their pronounced tendency to deposit on machinery and paper products.

Petrographic and geochemical investigations of the late antiquity unguentaria from the archaeological site of Tripolis, Denizli (southwestern Turkey)

The archaeological research carried out within the fort and vicus of Favianis/Mautern, on the Austrian-Danube limes, has provided scholars with important new information for the development of settlement structures and for material culture in the Roman imperial and late antique periods, as well as for the Early Middle Ages. Archaeological structures in the fort were analysed alongside the structures in the vicus. A major focus of this analysis lay in the examination of diverse forms of waste management during the Roman imperial and late antique periods, and the interpretation of primary and secondary rubbish. The findings provide us with new evidence for the population migration from the vicus to the fort in Late Antiquity, for the dating of Horreum ware and late antique burnished pottery, as well as for the transition from the late antique fort to the Early Medieval town.

San Francesco d'Assisi (Apulia, South Italy): Study of a manipulated 13th century panel painting by complementary diagnostic techniques

For much of the 20th century, the focus of Late Antique studies in Greece was on the excavation of churches. This resulted in a vast body of essential material contributing to an understanding of the period. The exceptional excavation work of archaeologists such as Anastasios Orlandos, Dimitrios Pallas, Georgios Soteriou and Ioannis Stampoltzis among others has provided scholars with a huge body of church data. However, data for analysing Late Antique settlements, industries and trade has not been as extensive. This has resulted in a near total reliance on the churches and historical sources such as Libanius, Zosimus, Procopius, Eusebius and Theophanes for an understanding of Late Antique Greece. There is some useful textual material, such as references to territory and diocese, as discussed in Hierokles' Sixth Synekdemos and the Acts of the Ecumenical Councils, as well as, of course, the Theodosian Code. The increasing amount of secular data resulting from rescue and research excavations and survey has made a significant contribution to redressing the outdated view of the Late Antique period as one of decline. In some respects this view was perpetuated by the fact that it is caught between the high points of the Roman Imperial and Byzantine periods. The underlying context was, therefore, seen rather in terms of decline (particularly urban) and less in terms of the birth of significant artistic and social endeavours.The Late Antique period for the purposes of this chapter will be taken to run from the mid fourth century AD (the foundation of Constantinople) to the creation of the thema of the Helladikon between AD 687 and 695.

3-D optical fluorescent microscopy becomes now an efficient tool for volume investigation of living biological samples. Developments in instrumentation have permit to beat off the conventional Abbe limit, in any case the recorded image can be described by the convolution equation between the original object and the Point Spread Function (PSF) of the acquisition system. If the goal is 3-D quantitative analysis, whether you improve the instrument capabilities, or (and) you restore the data. These last is until now the main task in our laboratory. Based on the knowledge of the optical Transfer Function of the microscope, deconvolution algorithms were adapted to automatic determine the regularisation threshold in order to give less subjective and more reproducible results. The PSF represents the properties of the image acquisition system; we have proposed the use of statistical tools and Zernike moments to describe a 3-D system PSF and to quantify the variation of the PSF. This first step toward standardization is helpful to define an acquisition protocol optimizing exploitation of the microscope depending on the studied biological sample. We have pointed out that automating the choice of the regularization level; if it facilitates the use, it also greatly improves the reliability of the measurements. Furthermore, to increase the quality and the repeatability of quantitative measurements a pre-filtering of images improves the stability of deconvolution process. In the same way, the PSF pre-filtering stabilizes the deconvolution process. We have shown that Zernike polynomials can be used to reconstruct experimental PSF, preserving system characteristics and removing the noise contained in the PSF. Fluorescent microscopes suffer from limitations; photobleaching and phototoxicity effects, or influence of the sample optical properties to 3-D observation. Amplitude and phase of the object can be reached with optical tomography based on a combination of microholography with a tomographic illumination. So indices cartography of the specimen can be obtained, and combined with fluorescence information it will open new possibilities in 3-D optical microscopy.

We present a dual modality ultra-thin imaging system based on a optical multimode fiber and a optical fiber hydrophone that combines optical resolution photoacoustic and fluorescence microscopy.

A total of 1496 investigated colourless glass analyses have been collected with the aim of achieving a clear geographical, typological, chronological and compositional overview on this particular type of glass. Based on manganese and antimony contents, four main groups were characterised: naturally colourless, Mn-decoloured, Sb-decoloured and Mn/Sb-decoloured. Main achievements relates to the chronological distribution of manganese and antimony technologies, the former being associated to a long lasting technology which culminated during the Late Antique period while the latter being practically absent after the 8th century AD, being at its acme during the Roman imperial period. Except for naturally colourless glass, glass-making technology mostly implied the use of impure sands and natron, relegating the other components to a virtually irrelevant presence, except during the Late Antique and Medieval periods.

This introductory chapter describes the debilitating effects of leprosy, or Hansen's disease, on the human body and the particular stigmatization lepers have endured throughout history. At times dubbed “walking corpses” by Byzantine preachers, those afflicted with the disease were subjects of fear and revulsion in European literature during the high and later Middle Ages. The chapter argues, however, that history has omitted the more positive treatment of lepers and leprosy in the Byzantine Empire during this period, especially in comparison to the attitudes maintained by Western Europe. In the late antiquity period, the Byzantine state and church were confronting leprosy and its effects well before the Latin West; and the ideas, attitudes, and institutions forged by the Greek Christians of the eastern Mediterranean naturally passed to the Latin West. Thus, it becomes important to integrate the story of leprosy in the East and the West into a single, comprehensive account.

The chapter illuminates how bracelets and torcs were used to construct social identities, and their importance as protective artefacts, using new evidence, particularly relating to diameter sizes, to question some previous interpretations of these artefacts. It starts with a preliminary discussion regarding identification and how these objects were worn. The data set of bracelets is then presented and evidence for dating of particular bracelet types is considered. Evidence for the use and social function of bracelets is then set out, particularly diameter sizes, which are shown to be important in identifying use by people at particular life course stages, for instance infants and children. Bracelets are shown to be especially common as a children’s item in Egypt, in contrast to other provinces. One particular type of bracelet, the amuletic disc bracelet, is shown to be associated with protection during pregnancy. The chapter then examines torcs, and following a literature review and discussion of dating evidence for particular types, it is established that most are of sixth- to seventh-century CE date. It is also shown that, contrary to established opinion, torcs do not have military associations in the late antique period, at least in Egypt. The diameter sizes of types of non-openable torcs instead show a strong bias to wear by infants and young children. The social functions of torcs are then discussed, which could include protection, status assertion, and signifier of dedication to a particular role. Other topics discussed include inheritance of these objects within families.

Compared to other stretches of the eastern frontier, northeastern Anatolia has rarely attracted the attention of scholars of the Roman and late antique periods. The region is known, through late antique written sources, to have housed a belligerent confederation of tribes, the Tzani, who lived off raids conducted against their neighbours. Until the fifth century AD, the Roman approach to the Tzanic problem was one of quiet co-existence, but, in the early sixth century AD, after war broke out again with Persia, necessity moved the emperor Justinian (r. AD 527–565) to intervene more actively against the Tzani. According to the sixth-century historian Procopius, the Tzani were subdued and a chain of forts was constructed in their lands to protect access to the Black Sea coast. The remains of these forts, as well as those of other sixth-century AD infrastructure allegedly built under Justinian, are still elusive. Nonetheless, evidence on the ground and in the written sources can still help investigate the nature of the Justinianic frontier defensive system.

The church fathers were appalled in particular by the Gnostics' condemnation of creation. But the fact that much of their teaching was in many respects not so far from Christian dogma must have disturbed the advocates of the “real” Christian church. In some of these Gnostic systems, Christ was the main savior figure; in others, it was the forefathers of the Old Testament who guaranteed salvation; in Manichaeism, it was the new Messenger of Light, the apostle Mani, who, coming after Christ, would finally give the right revelation to the people and excel Christ in doing so. This article deals with religious groups such as these as they existed in Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods. Papyrology has played a decisive role in our understanding of the religious movements of the first centuries ce in Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

I must begin with the words of the clergyman: ‘My short sermon for today is divided into three parts. One: God. Two: Man. Three: The Universe.’ It will be impossible to do justice to the subject in hand in the short span of one lecture. This is not only because of the vast range of time and space involved in any consideration of the parting of the ways between eastern and western Christianity in the late antique period. To embark on such a theme involves holding up for scrutiny the very nature of ecclesiastical history. For what we have to deal with is not merely what happened in the relations between east and west, but why what happened happened as it did. Once the ecclesiastical historian asks why, he will find himself sooner or later forced to grapple with the whole quality of men’s lives in the past—that is, with how they lived the full twenty-four hours of the day, not only in their books, but in their churches, not only in their churches, but in the most intimate and most monotonous rhythms of their life.

Transformations of baptismal complexes in central Dalmatia during the late antique period

How far do the pictures in early medieval manuscripts reflect contemporary life? Are the busy and attractive figures which populate many Carolingian or Late Saxon illuminations reflections of their painters and their patrons, or are they ghostly survivors of the Roman Empire, fossilized in a scribal convention? For some archaeologists, of course, the question of authenticity has never arisen, the contemporary relevance of pictures being cheerfully assumed; but it has to be stated at the outset that the odds are generally set against such optimism. That early painted books were usually copied from other painted books is clear from a continuity of image, picturecycle or design, all having roots in the Late Antique period. Thus drawing from life, or even abstract invention, where it occurred, will not be obvious and is probably only detectable at all by a process of elimination