Novel Archaeometrical and Historical Transdisciplinary Investigation of Early 19th Century Hellenic Manuscript Regarding Initiation to Secret "Philike Hetaireia"

Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry Vol. 23, No 1, (2023)

Liritzis_et_al_ARCHAEOMETRY IN PHILIKE HAETEREIA

A new handwritten twenty pages’ manuscript of initiation to the Greek secret “friendly society” organization which was formed beginning of 19th century and essentially established the Greek independence against the Turks has been investigated. Historical accounts, spectroscopy analysis using Raman, X Ray Fluorescence and Near Infrared, for paper and ink characterization, as well as radiocarbon dating, and fractal of Minkowski Dimension algorithm of 5-lines and full-page handwritten text to identify number of scribers, and a novel pre- processing RGB color analysis of ink and paper identification have been applied. The investigation and results verify the dating of this manuscript to 1819, identify five types of iron gall inks, characterize the pulpwood and identify five different paper lots and four scribes from the ink content and handwritten styles of the com- pact five lines text and whole text pages. The results are mutually corroborated...