adages and aphorism, notwithstanding their differences, are considered to be the most veridical of literary tools, revealing nations’ internal and external mentalities. as the garnish of words along with a means of bolstering the power of argument, they have been prevalent in all literary eras and constitute one of the major, precious branches of literate and are credible documents of bygone cu...

We discuss the use of multivariate kernel smoothing methods to date manuscripts dating from the 11th to the 15th centuries, in the English county of Essex. The dataset consists of some 3300 dated and 5000 undated manuscripts, and the former are used as a training sample for imputing dates for the latter. It is assumed that two manuscripts that are “close”, in a sense that may be defined by a ve...

Alleged ?Aegean migrations? have long been seen as underlying major transformations in lifeways and identity the Balkans 12th-11th centuries BC. Revisiting material culture settlement changes north-south ?routeway? of Velika Morava-Juzna Morava-Vardar/Axios river valleys, this paper evaluates developments within local communities. It is argued that mobility played an important role social chang...

In the Barber collection of Fine Arts (University Birmingham) a seal issued by Konstantinos Philosophos, krites and strategos Islands dated to 1070s or 1080s has been preserved. With this as starting point, I examine historical circumstances appointment Philosophos in particularly devaluation dignities fusion civil with military administration. Furthermore, members rather obscure family Philoso...