Defining and studying lost documents (deperdita) from early medieval Europe and beyond: possibilities and implications

在被称为中世纪早期的时期(用欧洲术语来说)产生的大部分书面文件都没有保存下来。然而，幸存下来的文件和档案暴露了那些已经丢失的文件和档案的存在。在拉丁裔西欧的史学中，这些丢失的文件和档案被称为“deperdita”。这个新的国际网络是有史以来第一个通过与其他时期、文献文化和学科进行比较来研究丢失的文件和档案的协调努力。虽然该网络是由欧洲中世纪早期的学者发起的，但它的目的是与其他时期的历史学家和地方以及其他学科的学者展开对话，对他们来说，丢失文件是一个关键问题。对于早期现代欧洲、伊斯兰世界以及中世纪和早期现代犹太社区的历史学家来说，情况就是如此，对所有这些人来说，文件档案都构成了他们的证据库的核心。档案丢失和找回也是档案学学科中的长期问题，近年来这些问题与记录数字化产生的问题和可能性联系在一起。技术进步也使数字人文方法发挥了作用，例如识别档案遗漏或遗漏的网络分析，以及帮助找回丢失文本的成像技术。我们的研究将询问我们如何调查和理解纪录片丢失，以及它的研究提供了什么机会来提供在不同领域引起共鸣的见解。我们将创建一个由历史学家、档案学家和数字人文专家组成的新的国际网络，以调查欧洲中世纪早期和同源社会的‘deperdita’研究如何在所有这些学科中互惠互利。在三个年度会议上，早期中世纪学者在他们所处时期关于deperdita的工作将由早期现代时期的历史学家、前现代犹太和伊斯兰档案的历史学家、档案学家和数字人文专家仔细审查。我们的目标不仅是相互通报和影响彼此的工作，而且特别是利用我们共享的专业知识来设计有重点的研究项目，优化我们的方法，并确定传播我们成果的最佳方式。

A large majority of the written documents produced in the period known (in European terms) as the early middle ages do not survive. The documents and archives that do survive, however, betray the existence of those that have been lost. In the historiography of Latinate western Europe, these lost documents and archives are known as 'deperdita'. This new international network constitutes the first ever concerted effort to study lost documents and archives, informed by comparison with other periods, documentary cultures and disciplines.While the network has been initiated by scholars of the European early middle ages, it aims to open conversations with historians of other periods and places and scholars from other disciplines for whom the subject of lost documents is a key concern. This is the case for historians of early modern Europe, of the Islamic world, and of medieval and early modern Jewish communities, for all of whom documentary archives form the core of their evidence base. Archival loss and recovery have also been long-standing issues in the discipline of archival science, issues that have linked in recent years with the problems and possibilities generated by the digitisation of records. Technological advance has also brought digital humanities methodologies into play, such as network analysis to recognize what archives omit or miss and imaging technology to help to recover lost text. Our research will ask how we can investigate and understand documentary loss and what opportunities its study provides to contribute insights that resonate in different fields. We will create a new international network of historians, archivists and digital humanities specialists to investigate ways in which the study of 'deperdita' in the European early middle ages and cognate societies can be of mutual benefit across all of these disciplines. In three annual meetings, the work of early medievalists on 'deperdita' in their period will be scrutinized by historians of the early modern period and of pre-modern Jewish and Islamicate archives, by archival scientists and by digital humanities specialists. We aim not only to inform and influence each other's work, but also in particular to exploit our shared expertise to devise focused research projects, optimize our methodologies and determine the best ways to disseminate our results.