Material analysis of inks from Byzantine manuscripts

Research field “Artefact profiling” at the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” of the University of Hamburg aims at bridging the gap between humanities and natural sciences and technology. To that purpose, we set up a laboratory with a range of high-end instruments, most of them mobile, allowing thorough non-destructive analysis of written artefacts. Through a selection of examples from Byzantine manuscripts we will present our equipment and the possibilities offered by the different techniques available to contribute to both archaeometrical and philological questions: typology and classification of inks, provenance studies, recovery of faded inscriptions and palimpsests, reconstruction of the history of manuscripts, authentication and dating.

The research for this presentation was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176 'Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures', project no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.