David,
I'm glad you've begun this thread, which clarifies an old puzzle.
I see that your default definition of 'zodiac' is astrological, and that most others here also take that as a given.
So your 'zodiac' is (in effect) " [astrological] zodiac'.
But for persons who write about medieval and other imagery, the default meaning of 'zodiac' is not astrological but astronomical and in terms of ancient and medieval history and art, the predominant expectation is that the series of zodiac emblems are markers of the calendar-months. That is to say that Aries means the constellation of Aries, used as the visible sign that this was the time of year when people did such-and-such, when the liturgical calendar celebrated this and that, and so forth. Nothing to do with astrology or its calculations.
Because the series of 12 constellations served as the calendar of the illiterate, it was pictured in public on medieval cathedrals, in mosaic, and again (for the literate landowners) in their books of hours and so on.
It was a series universally known, and for most nothing whatever to do with astrology and with none of the astrologer's calculations or 'virtual position' for a figure.
So I've been puzzled as to why, when I point out the obvious fact that MS Beinecke 408 contains no zodiac, no-body seemed to see it.
But you've made clear that most researchers, assuming astrological purpose for the series, were less focussed on the fact that the twelve images clearly weren't pictures of the twelve constellations.
Thanks for that clarification. I hadn't been able to see how anyone could suppose - even with the addition of those month-names which oblige us to see a connection to the calendar - that this was a zodiac (in the more ordinary sense).
My question here has always been why, when the month-constellation zodiac was so universally known and used in the Latin and Islamic regions, the makers of the series had apparently managed to get it so very, very wrong.
My conclusion, btw - made by reference to so much else in the manuscript indicating connection to the maritime world and goods - has been that the inscriptions used older imagery gained from a different environment, and now used them to represent the ten months of the year when ships sailed the Mediterranean, while omitting January and February, when the ships did not sail.
I do think we are obliged, by the presence of the month-names, to posit their use as a calendar, and so differ from you there.
Anton is perfectly right about Nick Pelling's having already done the ground-breaking research into the idea of per-degree astrology here, and your being able to just cite that precedent should save you a lot of wasted time and effort. Pelling once referred to this endless 're-discovery' (because precedent works were so rarely or correctly cited, or even known, as the Voynich "groundhog day" phenomenon.
Getting rid of that issue is another reason why the folio-by-folio bibliography should prove a long-lasting benefit to Voynich studies, too.
About the llapidaries - the Kyranides etc. - when I began investigating that subject (sparked by a possible correlation between patterns used for the map and the barrel patterns) I didn't manage to find any precedents, and had to begin from scratch. I found a major historical problem: we find no extant evidence of any systematic patterning as lithological 'key' being devised before the nineteenth century. At least not in extant records; I'm sure such systems must have existed for the convenience of miners, jewellers and others. We do find a vague hint in some early mining maps from Egypt, but there's nothing about them any longer online.
I did find online a library of the most important ancient and classical texts including Theophrastus'. If you think it will help, I'll look up its address in one of those old posts of mine.
This sort of sharing is another great thing about Voynich 'ninja' and the new atmosphere it has brought.
Well done, all.