Crafting Documents, c. 500 - c. 800 CE

这个创新的项目将羊皮纸和墨水的技术分析与书法的古文字检查结合在一起，首次探索在古代和中世纪的书写实践之间的关键过渡时期（公元前500年至公元前800年），文件是如何制作的。它的核心是系统地利用大量但几乎完全被忽视的微小文件的语料库，许多文件不超过几厘米长，迄今为止被认为是微不足道的，不值得关注。对这些手稿的分析将揭示一个迄今为止看不见的、广泛存在的非正式文字世界，而研究中世纪手稿（抄本）和正式文件（如授予土地、办公室和特权的特许状）的学者们却没有注意到这个世界。将这些微小的文件视为文本人工制品，《制作文件》将为这一时期制作羊皮纸和准备墨水所需的工匠技能提供新的理解。在此基础上，它试图理解用笔形成字母的技能是如何受到书写表面和墨水质量的影响的。对材料限制和支持的新理解将产生新的知识，为什么手写在这些世纪中进化。此外，这项研究将把人们的注意力从著名的精英写作中心转移到揭示大量迄今为止未知的地方，在那里人们知道必要的实用和技术技能。为了实现这一目标，研究小组成员将分析附着在基督教文物上的识别标签，这些文物中有数百件保存在意大利、瑞士和法国的教会宝库和档案馆中。文物起源于从爱尔兰到中东的各个地方，这些神圣的东西以非常小的包裹在布或羊皮纸上的形式传播，每个包裹上都贴上标签。它们很容易携带，因此，它们通常在远离它们的创作地点的地方保存下来。因此，项目中心的四个大型收藏品提供了前所未有的机会，可以对来自欧洲各地甚至可能更远的地方的文字样本进行系统的检查，并探索这些高度移动的物体作为几种不同工艺技能隐藏传播的载体的意义。为了实现这一目标，《制作文件》将基督教遗迹实践历史上已有的专业知识与计算机辅助古代学和手稿科学的新发展结合在一起。工作将得到有关存储库的许可，用于确定羊皮纸和墨水组成的材料分析技术以及书写表面的3D显微镜将被使用。在获得许可的情况下，这将与羊皮纸的微创蛋白质组学分析相结合，以确定羊皮纸的动物物种。将这些结果与详细的古文字分析、笔迹特征和教会背景相结合，将创造一个关于中世纪早期抄写活动、工匠技能和遗物崇拜的新文化地理。

This innovative project brings together technical analysis of parchment and ink with a palaeographical examination of penmanship to explore, for the first time, how documents were made in the key transitional period between the writing practices of Antiquity and those of the Middle Ages, c. 500 to c. 800. At its centre is the systematic exploitation of a huge but almost entirely neglected corpus of tiny documents, many no more than a few centimetres long, which hitherto have been judged too insignificant for attention. They will be analysed to reveal a hitherto invisible world of widespread informal writing which has escaped the notice of scholars who study medieval manuscript books (codices) and formal documents such as charters granting land, offices and privileges. Treating these minute documents as textual artefacts, Crafting Documents will shed new light on the poorly understood artisan skills required to manufacture parchment and to prepare ink in this period. Building on this basis, it seeks to understand how the skills involved in forming letters with a pen were affected by the quality of the writing surface and of the ink. New understanding of the material constraints and affordances will generate new knowledge of why handwriting evolved in these centuries. Additionally, the research will shift attention away from the well-known, elite writing centres and reveal a wide range of hitherto unknown locales where the necessary practical and technical skills were known.To achieve this, the team members will analyse the identificatory labels which were attached to Christian relic-objects, several hundred of which have survived in ecclesiastical treasuries and archives in Italy, Switzerland and France. Relic-objects originated everywhere from Ireland to the Middle East, and this holy matter circulated as very small bundles parcelled up in cloth or parchment with a label attached to each one. These were readily portable and, in consequence, often survived far from their place of creation. The four large collections of them at the centre of the project thus provide unprecedented opportunities to make a systematic examination writing samples from across Europe and possibly beyond, and to explore the significance of these highly mobile objects as vectors in the hidden transmission of several different craft skills. To accomplish this, Crafting Documents brings together established expertise in the history of Christian relic practices with new developments in computer-assisted palaeography and manuscript science. Working will the permission of the repositories concerned, material analysis techniques for establishing the composition of parchment and ink as well as 3D microscopy of the writing surface will be used. Where permission has been granted, this will be combined with micro-invasive proteomic analysis of parchment to identify the animal species from which the parchment was prepared. Co-ordination of the results with a detailed palaeographical analysis of script, characteristic features of handwriting, and ecclesiastical context will create a new cultural geography of scribal activity, artisan skills, and relic cults in the early Middle Ages.