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地理检查结合在一起，首次探索在公元500年至公元800年的古代和中世纪写作实践的关键过渡时期，文件是如何制作的。其核心是系统地利用一个巨大但几乎完全被忽视的微小文件语料库，许多文件长度不超过几厘米，到目前为止，这些文件被认为太过微不足道，以至于无法引起注意。它们将被分析，以揭示一个迄今看不见的广泛非正式写作的世界，研究中世纪手稿书籍(抄本)和正式文件(如授予土地、办公室和特权的宪章)的学者们没有注意到这一世界。将这些微小的文件视为文本艺术品，制作文件将揭示在这一时期制作羊皮纸和准备墨水所需的鲜为人知的工匠技能。在此基础上，它试图了解用笔书写字母所涉及的技能是如何受到书写表面和墨水质量的影响的。对物质限制和负担能力的新理解将产生关于笔迹为什么在这几个世纪里演变的新知识。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出来，并揭示出广泛的迄今未知的地点，在那里知道必要的实用和技术技能。为了实现这一点，团队成员将分析贴在基督教文物上的识别标签，其中数百件保存在意大利、瑞士和法国的教会金库和档案馆。遗物起源于从爱尔兰到中东的任何地方，这种圣物以非常小的捆绑形式流传开来，包裹在布料或羊皮纸中，每个捆绑上都贴上标签。它们很容易携带，因此，经常在远离它们的创造之地存活下来。因此，处于该项目中心的四个大型收藏品提供了前所未有的机会，可以对来自整个欧洲乃至其他地区的书面样本进行系统的检查，并探索这些高度流动性的物体作为媒介在几种不同手工艺技能的隐藏传递中的意义。为了实现这一点，手工艺文件将基督教遗迹实践历史上的成熟专业知识与计算机辅助古文字学和手稿科学的新发展结合在一起。工作将得到有关储存库的许可，将使用材料分析技术来确定羊皮纸和墨水的成分，以及书写表面的3D显微镜。在获得许可的情况下，这将与羊皮纸的微创蛋白质组分析相结合，以鉴定制作羊皮纸的动物物种。将结果与对文字、笔迹特征和教会背景的详细古地理分析相协调，将创造中世纪早期抄写员活动、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.