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

在中世纪早期（欧洲术语）产生的大部分书面文件都没有保存下来。然而，那些幸存下来的文件和档案却暴露了那些已经丢失的文件和档案的存在。在拉丁语西欧的史学中，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次共同努力研究丢失的文件和档案，并与其他时期、文献文化和学科进行比较。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和地区的历史学家以及其他学科的学者展开对话，对他们来说，丢失的文献是一个关键问题。对于研究早期现代欧洲、伊斯兰世界、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，文献档案都是他们证据基础的核心。档案的丢失和恢复也是档案学学科中长期存在的问题，这些问题近年来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论发挥作用，例如网络分析可以识别档案遗漏或遗漏的内容，成像技术可以帮助恢复丢失的文本。我们的研究将询问我们如何调查和理解文献损失，以及它的研究提供了哪些机会来贡献在不同领域产生共鸣的见解。我们将创建一个由历史学家、档案保管员和数字人文专家组成的新的国际网络，以研究欧洲早期中世纪和同源社会的“独立”研究如何在所有这些学科之间实现互利。在三次年度会议上，早期中世纪学者关于他们所处时期“独立”的工作将由研究早期现代和前现代犹太和伊斯兰档案的历史学家、档案科学家和数字人文专家仔细审查。我们的目标不仅是为彼此的工作提供信息和影响，而且特别要利用我们共同的专业知识来设计重点研究项目，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.