Investigation of manuscripts found in sites along the Silk Road shows the history of communication and exchange between Asia and the Mediterranean over the centuries. Different scripts and languages preserved on paper in certain styles provide information about traditions and provenance.
To get an idea of the cultural background of the highly developed painting techniques obvious in some illuminated manuscripts, the material used for writing and painting is analyzed. Singular Sogdian and Tocharian manuscripts from Turfan show text on one side with a colorful painting on the other side of the document. In comparison with other productions of different periods or usages from the site, special features are worked out to characterize cultural roots or influence in the network of relationships. Details analyzed in the most elaborated documents Show various influences led to the colorful masterpieces.
Die naturwissenschaftliche Analyse historischer Materialen ermöglicht die Beantwortung kulturhistorischer Fragestellungen, die mit kunsthistorischen oder archäologischen Ansätzen allein nicht zu leisten sind. In dieser Studie wurden sechs römische Münzen mit unterschiedlich stark ausgeprägten Korrosionsschichten an unbehandelten und polierten Stellen mit vier zerstörungsfreien analytischen Methoden untersucht: Hoch- und Niederenergie Protonen Induzierter Röntgenemission (HE-/PIXE), Synchrotronstrahlungsinduzierte-Röntgenfluoreszenzanalyse (SY-RFA) und Mikro-Röntgenfluoreszenzanalyse (Mikro-RFA) mit einem mobilen Gerät. Aufgrund von Unterschieden in den Messbedingungen und dem Einfluss der Patina-Schichten auf diese ergaben sich nur für wenige Elemente Übereinstimmungen in den quantitativen Daten. Zur Validierung zukünftiger Messkampagnen mit verschiedenen Methoden sind daher Vergleichstudien unerlässlich.
The library of the remote monastery of Qäqäma Maryam Kidanä Mehrät in Däg'a Tämben (Tagray, North Ethiopia) was investigated by the team of the project Ethio-SPaRe in June and November 2012. A preliminary study of the library showed that the collection was extended and profoundly renovated in the nineteenth Century, in the course of the revival the monastery had during the reign of King Yohannas IV (1872-89). The shaping of the collection was apparently linked to the figure of the powerful abbot, Gäbrä Giyorgis, who donated dozens of books of diverse provenance, which he himself gathered or received as gifts.1 As the result, the extensive library contains a huge amount of information, but its heterogeneity poses a very serious challenge to the researcher.
Energy dispersive and wavelength dispersive X-ray spectrometry are used to determine the composition of a specimen in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) by electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). A valuable completion for the SEM is analysis by X-ray fluorescence (XRFA). The main advantage of this method consists in its low detection limit. XRFA with a SEM uses the same spectrometers as for EPMA, necessary are only an additional X-ray source for the excitation of fluorescence spectra and software for their evaluation. Recent developments of smart low-power X-ray tubes and X-ray optical components enabled the construction of compact X-ray sources with focussing properties as add-on for a SEM. For quantitative XRFA the source spectrum has to be known. For its calculation the X-ray production yields Y have been measured for the commonly used tube target materials Mo, Rh and W. The excitation spectra were calculated for a variety of source types and compared with respect to the achievable photon flux and its spectral distribution.