I work on questions of a quantitative nature that trigger my curiosity. Currently these questions concern medieval manuscripts, coin finds, urbanisation, transportation, institutions and technology in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East between Classic Antiquity and circa 1800. My main interest is to find out whether the found quantitative estimates (cliometrics) and their spatial and temporal distributions can be seen as proxys for the local economic development at the time; and how we can explain the mechanisms influencing these phenomena and describe them (cliodynamics).