6.12 FC – Byzantium in the Lab: New Types of Digital and Natural Scientific Analysis

This paper introduces and contextualizes forty-seven unpublished Byzantine lead seals acquired in Istanbul during the last decades of the twentieth century and now held in a private collection in Japan. The assemblage is dominated by administrative seals, though several imperial issues are also represented. Conventional sigillographic criteria—iconography, metrology, and prosopographical analysis—suggest a broad middle-Byzantine period…

The Early Byzantine period, characterized by significant demographic and epidemiological transitions, provides a crucial framework for understanding ancient disease dynamics. In this study, we investigate a mass burial group unearthed during the ongoing Ayasuluk excavations (Selçuk, Turkey), attributed to the Early Byzantine period and consisting of the commingled remains of fifteen individuals. Through ancient microbiome…