Late Antique Period Research Articles

A Method of Affixing Fortification Walls to Steep Gradients

A late Roman foundation technique employed in the construction of rubble-and-mortar fortification walls that ascend steep gradients is described. Precipitously climbing walls of Classical and Hellenistic date are commonplace to the mountainous topography of central Greece and this late Roman foundation method outwardly mimics that tradition. However, being constrained by the resources of the late Antique period, an ingenious foundation technique was used that produced durable climbing walls which were far more simply, economically and rapidly constructed.

Eastern and western Christendom in late antiquity: a parting of the way

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.

1307. Molecular beam scattering from solid surfaces: H Wilsch, Vacuum-Tech, 24 (2), 1975, 43–52 ( in German)

Ancient mosaic tesserae are a range of materials of very varied and complex nature, including pottery, stone and glass. Raman spectroscopy is a powerful tool for the analysis of all these kinds of materials. In the particular case of glasses, this technique can be used both for a study of surface weathering and for the characterization of bulk structure, but it has not yet been extensively used for the characterization of mosaic glass tesserae. We carried out Raman analyses on a set of Roman and Late Antiquity period mosaic glass samples, which allowed a good characterization of both the glass matrix and the crystalline inclusions. All the samples show the typical Raman signatures of soda-lime-silicate glasses. Several crystalline phases were also identified, being relics of raw materials used during the glass manufacturing process, such as quartz and feldspars, or linked to the glass color/opacification, such as bindheimite and cuprite. The analyses also led to the identification in some blue, turquoise and green tesserae of calcium antimonate, whose Raman signature has only recently been recognized in the scientific literature on mosaic glasses. Some emphasis is given to the analysis of red lead-containing tesserae, colored with Cu+ ions or even Cu0 (or Au0) metal nanoparticles. Samples with peculiar compositions, as well as “modern” (and restoration) samples, could quite easily be distinguished from the ancient ones by their Raman spectra.