Cork Dork (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cork_dork) wrote in doooook, |
Doing an analysis of the manuscript's vellum may or may not bear fruit; a number of manuscripts are written on palimpsets (books that had the ink from a prior manuscript scraped off and a new text placed on). In that case, the original vellum may have come from far (both chronologically and geographically) from where the manuscript was penned -- books were a very portable source of wealth (a small, non-illuminated religious text would cost the equivalent of about $5,000 today. A fancy text would cost on the order of $100,000), and so they would be used as such.
