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57-462: According to the data obtained by stratigraphy (and dendrochronology ), carbon dating and from the text itself (where the year 999 occurs several times), the wax codex was used in the first quarter of the 11th century, and maybe even in the last years of the 10th century. It is therefore older than the Ostromir Gospels , the earliest precisely dated book of Kievan Rus'. Since 1932, remnants of

114-661: A dualistic group similar to the Bogomils . After the ‘official’ church had prevailed, the sect’s texts were no longer copied and most traces of the existence of this heresy were erased. An especially symptomatic example of the scribe’s attitude to the ‘official’ church is the following excerpt from the “Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son”: Work on the Novgorod Codex

171-444: A cemetery, which in turn could be grouped with a building, such as a church, to produce a " phase ". Phase implies a nearly contemporaneous Archaeological horizon , representing "what you would see if you went back to time X". The production of phase interpretations is the first goal of stratigraphic interpretation and excavation. Archaeologists investigating a site may wish to date the activity rather than artifacts on site by dating

228-443: A certain symbol the chains switch off to a different text fragment. Sometimes these false branches are identified after only a few symbols, but sometimes the false branches can take several words, sentences, and even longer to be discounted. Such false leads can take several days or even weeks to identify. Another specific of the texts is that many of them have been written multiple times, for reasons that can only be guessed at. Due to

285-542: A court house and a Novgorod city treasury. The vast majority of text found in Novgorod were birch bark manuscripts ; wax tablets were extremely uncommon. On 13 July 2000, the expedition headed by prof. Valentin Yanin discovered three wooden wax tablets in the soil. The tablets were 19 x 15 x 1 cm, and they have a 15 x 11.5 cm indentation filled with wax. Two of the tablets have one wax layer and one blank wooden side, and

342-489: A finger when touching a device screen. There is no electronic communication between a passive stylus and a device, and the device treats the stylus the same as a finger. Passive styluses are considered less accurate than active styluses. An active stylus includes electronic components that communicate with a device's touchscreen controller, or digitizer. Active pens are typically used for note taking, on-screen drawing/painting, and electronic document annotation. They help prevent

399-414: A huge amount of cross referencing with other recorded sequences is required to produce dating series from stratigraphic relationships such as the work in seriation . One issue in using stratigraphic relationships is that the date of artifacts in a context does not represent the date of the context, but just the earliest date the context could be. If one looks at the sequence in figure A , one may find that

456-605: A new surface with carbon paper , and hand embossing . Styluses are also used to engrave into materials like metal or clay . Styluses are used to make dots as found in folk art and Mexican pottery artifacts. Oaxaca dot art is created using styluses. Modern day devices, such as phones, can often be used with a stylus to accurately navigate through menus, send messages etc. Today, the term stylus often refers to an input tool usually used with touchscreen -enabled devices, such as Tablet PCs , to accurately navigate interface elements, send messages, etc. This also prevents smearing

513-405: A relationship that is earlier, "lower", though this does not refer necessarily to the physical location of the context. It is more useful to think of "higher" as it relates to the context's position in a Harris matrix , a two-dimensional representation of a site's formation in space and time. Archaeological stratigraphy is based on a series of axiomatic principles or "laws". They are derived from

570-413: A single concealed text of one page can take weeks. According to Zaliznyak, reading the concealed texts in the scratches is a unique challenge unlike anything attempted by any research team previously. The very compact surface of the four writing surfaces contains traces of thousands of texts, estimated to have been written over several decades. As such, the stylus traces form a constant mesh of lines across

627-406: A small portion of the texts preceding the basic text. The main difficulty with this task is the fact that the feeble traces of dozens of thousands of letters left by the stylus , often hardly discernible from the natural shading of the soft lime wood, have been superimposed on each other, producing an impenetrable labyrinth of lines (Zaliznyak speaks of a “hyper- palimpsest ”). Consequently, ‘reading’

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684-458: A third tablet has two wax sides. The boards have round holes at one edge, through which wooden pegs were inserted, holding the tablets together as a four-page book. The tablets were discovered in a stratum 50 cm away and 30 cm below a wooden walkway dendrochronologically dated to the year 1036. As the strata in Novgorod are estimated to have grown at about 1 cm per year, the document

741-413: Is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery . It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision when using touchscreens . It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen . Many styluses are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely used writing tool

798-409: Is a required component in archaeological archives, but there is a growing problem for digital data archives, where stratigraphic data are often only held on paper or as scanned image copies (PDFs) of matrix diagrams. This means that they cannot be easily re-used in further analysis. Some recommendations are being made to address this problem. Stylus A stylus ( pl. : styli or styluses )

855-569: Is also an instrument used to scribe a recording into smoked foil or glass. In various scientific instruments this method may be employed instead of a pen for recording as it has the advantage of being able to operate over a wide temperature range, does not clog or dry prematurely, and has nearly negligible friction in comparison to other methods. These characteristics were useful in certain types of early seismographs and in recording barographs that were once used to verify sailplane records. The styluses used in scanning tunneling microscopes have only

912-573: Is continuing. Scholarly literature, so far published only in Russian, is listed in the Russian Misplaced Pages article . Stratification (archeology) Stratigraphy is a key concept to modern archaeological theory and practice. Modern excavation techniques are based on stratigraphic principles. The concept derives from the geological use of the idea that sedimentation takes place according to uniform principles. When archaeological finds are below

969-535: Is likely Isaakiy himself converted pagan Slavs. The teachings of Alexander the Armenian were likely an early form of Bogomilism . The Nikonian Chronicle contains a mention of a schismatic monk Andreyan jailed for disagreeing with the official church in 1004, during the timeframe the codex texts were written. According to Evgeniy Golubinskiy , this Andreyan was a Bogomil. So the Novgorod Bogomil codex being found in

1026-468: Is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille . The English word stylus has two plurals: styli and styluses . The original Latin word was spelled stilus ; the spelling stylus arose from an erroneous connection with Greek στύλος ( stylos ), 'pillar'. The Latin word had several meanings, including "a long, sharply pointed piece of metal;

1083-548: Is therefore done letter by letter, starting from an arbitrary position, usually somewhere at the top of a 'page'. After analyzing a meshwork of scratches and identifying some of the letters in a given spot (which can realistically number hundreds or even thousands), Zaliznyak then moves some distance to the side and begins identifying symbols at the next position. After several positions are discerned in that way, most letter combinations are discarded as senseless jumble, and possibly meaningful words are identified. Zaliznyak then moves to

1140-556: The Areopagite of Thracia is connected to the listing of Thracians early in the list. Finally, another text that Zaliznyak calls “Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son” contains the following note “Въ лѣто ҂ѕ҃ф҃з҃ азъ мънихъ исаакии поставленъ попомъ въ соужъдали въ цръкъве свѧтаго александра арменина…” (“In 6507 [i.e. 999] I, monk Isaac, was posted as a priest in Suzdal , at

1197-449: The Areopagite of Thracia , of Laodicean origins (birth)'. The text contains a highly unorthodox prayer, reading 'we pray to thee father Alexander, forgive us our sins by your will and give us salvation and the food of paradise, amen'. In it, this Alexander therefore assumes powers usually reserved to God alone. The prayer is followed by prophecies by the same Alexander, who then calls for people to 'leave your villages and homes' and to walk

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1254-533: The Psalter known so far (especially the Psalterium Sinaiticum ). The language of the Novgorod Codex is a very regular (especially in the basic text) Church Slavonic , albeit with some 'mistakes' in the rendition of the yus letters betraying the author's East Slavic origin. The whole text was written by the same hand in a so-called 'monoyeric' orthography (Russian одноеровая система письма ), i.e. instead of

1311-632: The ancient Mesopotamians in order to write in cuneiform . They were mostly made of reeds and had a slightly curved trapezoidal section. Egyptians (Middle Kingdom) and the Minoans of Crete (Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic) made styli in various materials: reeds that grew on the sides of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and in marshes and down to Egypt where the Egyptians used styli from sliced reeds with sharp points; bone and metal styli were also used. Cuneiform

1368-436: The archaeological sequence or stratigraphy. They can be deposits (such as the back-fill of a ditch), structures (such as walls), or "zero thickness surfaces", better known as " cuts ". Cuts represent actions that remove other solid contexts such as fills, deposits, and walls. An example would be a ditch "cut" through earlier deposits. Stratigraphic relationships are the relationships created between contexts in time, representing

1425-402: The backfilling of pit 8, occurred sometime after the date for 9 but before the date for 1, and if we recover an assemblage of artifacts from context 7 that occur nowhere else in the sequence, we have isolated them with a reasonable degree of certainty to a discrete range of time. In this instance we can now use the date we have for finds in context 7 to date other sites and sequences. In practice

1482-400: The chronological order in which they were created. One example would be a ditch and the back-fill of said ditch. The temporal relationship of "the fill" context to the ditch "cut" context is such that "the fill" occurred later in the sequence; you have to dig a ditch before you can back-fill it. A relationship that is later in the sequence is sometimes referred to as "higher" in the sequence, and

1539-511: The church of St. Alexander the Armenian…”). The year 6507/999 reappears several times on the margins, and is the only numerical sequence identified in the text. “Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son” continues onto increasingly more gloomy analysis of the state of the world, showing that the writer identifies with people excluded from the official church for believing unorthodox teachings. Zaliznyak therefore postulates that

1596-534: The codex itself contains psalms 75 and 76 (and a small fragment of psalm 67 ). This is the so-called basic text of the Novgorod Codex. Consequently, the book is alternatively known as the Novgorod Psalter . This text can be read as easily as any other document on parchment and could be examined at once. The Psalter translation exhibits a somewhat different translatory tradition than the Slavonic translations of

1653-402: The cut for the construction of wall 2, context 5, has cut through layers 9 and 10, and in doing so has introduced the possibility that artifacts from layers 9 and 10 may be redeposited higher up the sequence in the context representing the backfill of the construction cut, context 3. These artifacts are referred to as "residual" or "residual finds". It is crucial that dating a context is based on

1710-489: The dates of the two layers sealing it. However the date of contexts often fall in a range of possibilities so using them to date others is not a straightforward process. Take the hypothetical section figure A . Here we can see 12 contexts, each numbered with a unique context number and whose sequence is represented in the Harris matrix in figure B . If we know the date of context 1 and context 9 we can deduce that context 7,

1767-598: The earth, spreading Alexander's message. Alexander then says 'whoever listens to me, listens to Peter '. This is followed by a highly original call following along the lines of 'leave your villages and homes', with dozens of phrases starting with 'leave your' and listing a great number of things to leave, all starting with a Slavic prefix 'raz-': разлады, раздоры, расклады, развозы, распловы, разлогы, разлеты, размеры, размолвы, and so on (troubles, strifes, positions, moving around, sailing, flying, sizes, disagreements, etc.). This highly original sequence leads Zaliznyak to believe that

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1824-431: The entire surface. To complicate the process, they are also all written by a single hand, making handwriting analysis impossible. As such, Zaliznyak does not call the process 'reading'; instead, he calls it 'reconstruction'. Instead of asking himself the question, 'what's written on this line', Zaliznyak approaches the problem as 'is a phrase A or a word B possible among everything written in this sector'. The reconstruction

1881-460: The individual contexts which represents events. Some degree of dating objects by their position in the sequence can be made with known datable elements of the archaeological record or other assumed datable contexts deduced by a regressive form of relative dating which in turn can fix events represented by contexts to some range in time. For example, the date of formation of a context which is totally sealed between two datable layers will fall between

1938-451: The latest dating evidence drawn from the context. We can also see that if the fill of cut 5 – the wall 2, backfill 3 and trample 12 — are not removed entirely during excavation because of " undercutting ", non-residual artifacts from these later "higher" contexts 2, 3 and 12 could contaminate the excavation of earlier contexts such as 9 and 10 and give false dating information. These artifacts may be termed intrusive finds . Stratigraphic data

1995-468: The letter, but the chains were admittedly short, only 20-30 symbols long. Finally, a problem Zaliznyak considers unsolvable is identifying spelling errors or Russisms in the Church Slavonic . Often, the position where an error or deviation from Church Slavonic is possible, a correct symbol or symbols will also be present alongside an erroneous one, in which case Zaliznyak always assumes the original text

2052-570: The medieval Russian city of Veliky Novgorod have been continuously excavated by the Novgorod Archaeological Expedition started by Artemiy Artsikhovsky . Since the early 1970s, the excavations focused on the Troitza ( Trinity ) area of the ancient Ludin part of town , covering nearly 6,000 square meters (64,500 square feet). The area excavated housed affluent mansions and a large 1,200 square meter (13,000 sq ft) communal building housed

2109-400: The multi-touch feature allowing the palm to rest on the tablet while still recognizing the stylus. Other than the types above, a haptic stylus is a stylus that simulates, through haptic technology , realistic physical sensations which can be felt while writing on paper. The sensation is sometimes enhanced by the combination of auditory and tactile illusions, such as with RealPen . A stylus

2166-454: The next position and attempts to locate subsequent symbols that would complete the word or a sentence. As the text, as was typical at the time, is written with no spaces between words , identifying these chains becomes somewhat easier than would be the case were it written with spaces. After careful examination of each position, Zaliznyak creates symbol chains that continue to grow in size. The search often branches off into false leads, where at

2223-448: The practitioner, but the terms interface, sub-group, and group are common. An example of a sub-group could be the three contexts that make up a burial; the grave cut, the body, and the back-filled earth on top of the body. Sub-groups can then be clustered together with other sub-groups by virtue of their stratigraphic relationship to form groups, which in turn form "phases." A sub-group burial could cluster with other sub-group burials to form

2280-482: The previous copy being erased before a new copy is made, each repetition is written somewhat shifted compared to the previous copy. It is unknown whether the copies were made right after each other, or weeks, months or even years apart. Multiple copies of the same text make identifying false chains easier. The process remains exceedingly hard to peer-review . Only small portions of Zaliznyak's texts have been peer-reviewed to this time, as no research team came forward that

2337-480: The principles of stratigraphy in geology but have been adapted to reflect the different nature of archaeological deposits. E.C. Harris notes two principles that were widely recognised by archaeologists by the 1970s: He also proposed three additional principles: Understanding a site in modern archaeology is a process of grouping single contexts together in ever larger groups by virtue of their relationships. The terminology of these larger clusters varies depending on

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2394-434: The problem of one's fingers or hands accidentally contacting the screen. As in ancient styluses, the stylus is pointed or rounded at one end and is made to fit in the grip of a hand comfortably. These styluses can be found in many different styles. Since many modern tablets make use of multi-touch recognition, some stylus and app manufactures have created palm rejection technologies into their products. This works to turn off

2451-419: The screen with oils from one's fingers. Styluses may also be used for handwriting, or for drawing using graphics tablets . Many new phones have a built-in stylus which tucks in behind the back cover. Some styluses may extend and contract into small, pen-like cylinders, which are easy to put away. Styluses come in both passive and active versions. A passive or capacitive stylus is a stylus that acts just like

2508-464: The stem of a plant; a pointed instrument for incising letters; the stylus (as used in literary composition), 'pen ' ". The last meaning is the origin of style in the literary sense. The Latin word is probably derived from the Indo-European root * stei- 'to prick', also found in the words stimulus 'a goad, stimulus' and instigare 'to incite, instigate'. Styli were first used by

2565-409: The strange title of a schismatic work written 500 years later by a Fyodor Kuritsyn , The Message of Laodicea , takes on a new light. The following concealed texts, among others, have been found so far: The great number of so far unknown texts in the Novgorod Codex might be explained by the fact that the writer belonged to a Christian community declared heretical by the ‘official’ church — probably

2622-537: The surface of the ground (as is most commonly the case), the identification of the context of each find is vital in enabling the archaeologist to draw conclusions about the site and about the nature and date of its occupation. It is the archaeologist's role to attempt to discover what contexts exist and how they came to be created. Archaeological stratification or sequence is the dynamic superimposition of single units of stratigraphy, or contexts. Contexts are single events or actions that leave discrete, detectable traces in

2679-776: The text was originally composed in Church Slavonic, as it is hard to imagine that translation from a foreign language could follow such a neat Slavic pattern. A subsequent concealed text contains the following passage: 'The world is a town in which live the Armenians and the Africans and the Thracians and the Italians and the Spanish and the Greeks'. Zaliznyak believes that an earlier allusion to Alexander,

2736-476: The time these texts were written, Zaliznyak believes that Isaakiy was taught outside of Rus, and became a monk elsewhere. He was likely a witness to the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988, and operated in a still largely pagan Rus of the early 11th century. The concealed texts contain a conversion prayer, which in first person singular and plural ( I and we ) denies idolatry and accepts Christianity, so it

2793-465: The two yer letters ь and ъ only ъ is used; before the codex discovery, the monoyeric system was considered to have been a late invention, with the dualyeric system being the original; the discovery proved that the reverse was the case. Preservation of the tablets presented unique challenges, as the usual preservation method for wood would have destroyed the wax layer, and vice versa. The method eventually decided on called for careful separation of

2850-484: The use of the stylus. In Western Europe styli were widely used until the late Middle Ages . For learning purposes the stylus was gradually replaced by a writing slate . From the mid-14th century improved water-powered paper mills produced large and cheap quantities of paper and the wax tablet and stylus disappeared completely from daily life. Styluses are still used in various arts and crafts. Example situations: rubbing off dry transfer letters, tracing designs onto

2907-472: The vicinity of a courthouse in the early 11th century therefore leads to some theories. Finally, a feature of the texts is common allusions to the city of Laodicea , without any direct references to any events there. Zaliznyak believes that Laodicea was a sort of a secret word among the Bogomils, which identified a Bogomil teaching to other believers, without making anything apparent to outsiders. In this context,

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2964-461: The wax layer, and preserving each material separately. The newly exposed wood under the removed wax was found to have been extensively scratched by the stylus cutting through the thin wax. It took the research team several weeks to realize that some symbols could be discerned in the scratches. Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak , one of the foremost experts on the early medieval Novgorod dialect , has taken tremendous effort to reconstruct so far only

3021-610: The writer was this monk Isaakiy, who followed a previously unknown schismatic teaching of a self-proclaimed prophet Alexander, an Armenian by birth, and that Alexander himself was based in Thracia, and Isaakiy was sent to spread Alexander's word in Suzdal. The 'church of St. Alexander', according to Zaliznyak, does not mean a physical church building, but rather a church in the sense of teachings or doctrine. As there were no monasteries anywhere in Rus during

3078-453: Was correctly written. In some cases, such assumptions will of course be incorrect. These multiple possibilities may also be the original author's correcting himself by erasing a mistake with his stylus and writing in a correct symbol. One of the first concealed texts reconstructed was an unnamed text Zaliznyak called Instruction on Forgiveness of Sins . Its introduction is written in first person by somebody who identifies himself as 'Alexander,

3135-410: Was entirely based on the " wedge -shaped" mark that the end of a cut reed made when pushed into a clay tablet ; from Latin cuneus 'wedge'. The linear writings of Crete in the first half of the second millennium BC which were made on clay tablets that were left to dry in the sun until they became "leather" hard before being incised by the stylus. The linear nature of the writing was also dictated by

3192-609: Was estimated to have been placed there around 1015-1020. Subsequent radiocarbon dating of the wax at the Uppsala University in Sweden gave the range of 760 AD to 1030 AD with a 95.4% certainty. Due to the Christian text on the tablets, dates earlier than the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988 are considered unlikely, and as such, the wax tablets are reliably dated to a very narrow 42-year window between 988 and 1030 AD. The wax of

3249-439: Was willing to learn and repeat the process over the length of a large text. Linguist Izabel Vallotton of Geneva cooperated with Zaliznyak on some portions of the reconstruction, where Zaliznyak identified a portion of the chain and passed it on to Vallotton, with both of them then continuing to independently reconstruct the text. In the experiment, both Vallotton and Zaliznyak ended up with completely identical chains, matching to

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