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

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.