Public Research Events

Lectures, workshops, seminars, and other scholarly events are part and parcel of our activities at the CSMC. They are occasions to exchange ideas with colleagues across disciplinary boundaries. They also give us an opportunity to learn from world-leading researchers at other institutions and deepen our international collaborations.

Most of our events are conducted in hybrid mode, giving interested scholars and students easy access to our research, no matter where they are. With events in languages other than English, including particularly African and Asian languages, we open up our conversations about written artefacts to participants and perspectives from scholarly communities other than the anglophone one. The success of our two pilot events in this area, a seminar series in Arabic and one in Persian, in Winter 2023/24 has shown us that the demand for teaching offers that reach beyond linguistic and cultural boundaries is very high, and we plan to expand such offers over the course of the coming years.

This page provides you with an overview of everything that has been going on since the start of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’.

Lecture Series

Digital Lunch Seminar Series

Written artefacts are material objects that bear writing in the broadest sense – from notation systems for language, music and other performative arts, to pictures, diagrams, maps or simply scribbles. Since the turn of the millennium, the study of written artefacts, such as manuscripts or inscriptions, has taken a quantum leap in terms of theory, methodology and the diversity of research materials. Traditionally, the study of written artefacts in the humanities has focused mostly on textual contents. In contrast, newer approaches take a holistic perspective and begin with the material object as such, thus integrating material analyses. This allows for novel insights into the history of writing cultures from the production of the first manuscripts and inscriptions approximately 5,500 years ago to handwriting in the digital age, as well as for elaborating cross-cultural, cross-regional and cross-epochal patterns through combining the expertise of various disciplines. On the one hand, the close cooperation between the natural sciences, computer science and the humanities allows us to reconstruct the cultural techniques involved in the production and use of written artefacts; on the other hand, this cooperation enables us to obtain information about the appropriate handling of such artefacts, which represent valuable cultural assets.

The Digital Lunch Seminars Series covers a broad spectrum of topics in the research of written artefacts. At CSMC and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, this research brings together over 40 disciplines from the humanities, natural sciences and computer science. The seminars are presented by pairs of researchers, each with their own methods and research questions about the objects they are dealing with. The seminars provide in-depth scientific knowledge on the respective topics and address all researchers within and outside the respective field of expertise.

After a short introduction to the topic by the chairperson, there will be two lectures of 20 minutes each. At the end of each session there will be time for discussion, questions and answers. If you are unable to attend one of the events, it is possible to obtain a video of the lecture from the respective speakers.

Current Editions

Spring 2024

Previous Editions

Handle with Care: Cultural Heritage and Ethics in Manuscript Studies

Equal Opportunity Lecture Series

Seminar Series

Studying Persianate Written Artefacts (in Persian)

An Introduction to Studying Manuscripts as Written Artefacts (in Arabic)

Since the nineteenth century, the study of manuscripts has been carried out in two separate fields. Traditional philology has primarily concentrated on textual analysis, with the goal of reconstructing the original version of a text by comparing its various extant copies. The notion of an authentic and ‘correct’ original text has been key to this analytical framework. In contrast, codicology has placed its emphasis on exploring the physical, material aspects of manuscripts, including, for example, binding techniques and tools or inks, as well as aspects of their paracontent.

This course seeks to combine these two approaches. It takes manuscripts as textual artefacts, i.e., as artefacts that can and need to be analysed with regard to their textual content and their materiality at the same time. The aim of the course is to show how this combined approach can shed light on a manuscript's history, including how the manuscript has changed over time and how it has been transmitted to us.

In the course of 13 lectures focused on different case studies, we will seek to clarify what this two-pronged approach means theoretically and practically. We will discuss manuscripts, learn from our own and each other’s mistakes, and explore the capabilities of this approach in charting the journeys of manuscripts in time and space, explaining the material changes that they underwent, and in some cases identifying those responsible for these journeys and these changes.

Towards the end of the course, we will apply the knowledge and experience gained up until that point to the field of ancient library history, discussing different research methods typically used in this field of research.

This course will be conducted entirely in Arabic and will provide Arabic-speaking students and scholars with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with approaches to the study of written artefacts developed in the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’.

Previous editions

Workshops

Inscribing Love: The Materialisation of Affects in a Global Perspective

When: Monday, 30 September 2024, 2:00 pm CET – Wednesday, 2 October 2024, 3:00 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

The transmission of love requires a materialisation in the form of a written artefact. Following Niklas Luhmann, love can be understood as a code of communication requiring a medium that he defines as informed material, e.g. an inscribed object. One obvious example is the love letter that might be seen as a handwritten artefact through which a lover expresses his or her affection. Since a letter serves to bridge a physical distance or substitute for an absence, the material quality of the letter is of particular importance. In addition to letters, numerous other forms of materialisation and inscription are used to convey emotions: one might think of love locks, testaments, farewell letters, carvings in bark, dedications, autographs, funerary spaces, poetry albums, friendship books or forms of ostentatious affective expression as in tattoos as inscriptions on the human body.

The workshop will hence focus on written artefacts that are supposed to express love for another person. We deliberately leave the concept of love open, as it encompasses diverse meanings in different cultures and epochs; instead, we focus on practices that are intended to communicate love by inscribing a material object. We want to explore if written artefacts, through their various forms of inscribed materiality, are historically, culturally or gender-specifically bound to certain practices, and represent closeness to a loved person. Rather than deciding whether an emotion expressed in an artefact corresponds to a “real” emotion, we want to analyse to what extent the expression of love is linked to certain practices of material authentication: this raises the question of the originality of the written artefact, which is particularly revealing when compared in a global perspective.

The workshop takes place within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, based at Universität Hamburg, and is linked in particular to ‘Inscribing Spaces’ (Research Field B) and ‘Creating Originals’ (Research Field C).

CHAI 2024 - 4th Workshop on Humanities-Centred AI at KI2024

Materiality of Sufi Manuscripts

From Manuscript to Sound: Colonial Dynamics in Peruvian Musical Manuscript Culture (17th–19th Centuries)

The Ecology of the Physiologus: Texts, Images, Manuscripts

Musical Heritage Across Borders: Materiality as an Indication of Distribution Channels

Manuscripts of Natural Philosophy

The Calligraphy of Tagging

PIER Workshop: Written Artefacts and Materials Science

Woodblock Printing: A Cross-Cultural Approach

When: Monday, 22 April 2024, 9:30 pm CET – Tuesday, 23 April 2024, 3:45 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Woodblock printing (relief printing) belongs to manuscript culture. The earliest extant specimens have been found in China and are dated to the late seventh century, the technique soon spread to other regions in East and Central Asia and was used for ephemeral as well as literary texts such as Buddhist sutras or the Confucian canon. In the tenth century, woodblock printing was attested in Egypt for producing amulets. In the Latin West, it apparently emerged in the early fifteenth century for woodcuts on paper and then was used for printing entire books (block-books) including writing and images. At the same time, woodblock imprints were integrated in various ways into manuscripts and moveable-type books and have been in use until the end of the twentieth century. How this evidence from different times and places is related, is still a subject for speculation. In addition, it is rather unlikely that all these different types of artefacts were produced using the same materials and techniques as developed in China.

Whether considered as an ‘extension of manuscript culture’ or a ‘technique to print manuscripts’, woodblock printing has always played a negligible role in the history of the book, which is still mainly concerned with the Western book printed with moveable type. From Thomas Francis Carter to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, influential authors have only devoted a paragraph or two to this technique and usually dismissed it as caused by the ‘high number of Chinese characters.’ Quite often it is associated with imprinting textiles or using stamps to reproduce patterns on various media. Thus, the specifics of this technique, its place among other technologies for the multiplication of handwritten signs and images, and the reasons why it persisted in some parts of the world, but was abandoned in others, are still largely unknown. The workshop will address these questions as well as problems of terminology.

Organisers:

Michael Friedrich
Arianna D'Ottone Rambach
Marco Heiles

Programme:

Woodblock Printing: A Cross-Cultural Approach (PDF)

Manuscripts with Sample Letters in Late Medieval Eurasia

Manuscript Flows in Highland Asia: Social Networks and Material Culture

From East to West: Christian Literacy in the First Millennium

Multilingualism in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond after Alexander the Great

When: Thursday, 1 February 2024, 2:00 pm CET – Friday, 2 February 2024, 1:30 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg, and online

The empire created by Alexander the Great was hardly comparable to any other seen before in terms of extension and variety of cultures. Encompassing Libya, Egypt, Greece, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Bactria, it even reached the Hindu Kush mountains and the faraway lands of the reign of Gandhara. Plutarch’s Life of Alexander the Great offers an account of Alexander’s political actions that explains his imperial ambitions with his love of honour (i.e. philotimia) and the cultural indeterminacy of his native Macedonia. According to Plutarch, these were the main reasons for Alexander’s ideal of promoting Hellenic ideals within a large multicultural empire. Whatever the reasons behind the creation of Alexander’s domain were, the impact of his conquests reverberated in the centuries following his death. The long interaction and intertwining between Greek and various indigenous customs led to the creation of a kaleidoscope of cultural phenomena, which find the most tangible echoes in the written sources known thus far. Greek was introduced as the main administrative language of the kingdom and influenced, to different degrees, the textual production in different settings.

This conference aims to explore the variety of cultural and linguistic phenomena that originated from the interaction between Greek and indigenous traditions in the different regions of the Macedonian empire. The introduction of a new language influenced the production of official written testimonies (i.e. monumental inscriptions) and other types of written artefacts (i.e. ritual objects, coinage). The main goal of this workshop is to examine the multilingual phenomena of the Macedonian lands in their complexity. Therefore, the idea is not only to explore the different degrees of linguistic intermingling between ethnic communities but also how this cultural interaction shaped and transformed the materiality of the written production peculiar to the different domains of this immense empire, for instance, leading to phenomena of hybridisation or, on the contrary, strong conservatism.

Workshop organisers:

Leah Mascia
Szilvia Sövegjártó

Programme:

Multilingualism in the Ancient Mediterranean after Alexander the Great (PDF)

Facing New Materials: Changes of Writing Substances, Implements and Supports in Manuscript Cultures

Accumulating Notes: Notebooks, Diaries and Related Examples of Everyday Writing as Multilayered Written Artefacts

When: Friday, 1 December 2023, 2:00 pm CET – Saturday, 2 December 2023, 2:24 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

People take notes in different contexts of their daily life, thereby producing (or modifying) a wide range of disparate written artefacts. The term ‘note’ is highly polysemic. As ‘a brief written observation, record, or abstract of facts’ (OED), a note can take the form of ephemeral written artefacts such as a shopping list on a slip of paper or a receipt on a piece of pottery. However, especially notes to be kept and transmitted over longer periods of time are often compiled or stored in one place, for example in a bound book, as a block of loose leaves within a box, or they might even manifest as a wall covered by graffiti.

While written artefacts such as notebooks or diaries specifically serve as places to keep notes, note-taking is, of course, not restricted to these. Another common practice is to record notes in the open spaces of an already existing written artefact of any kind, for example, as explanatory ‘paracontent’ (Ciotti et al. 2018) around a core content in a manuscript codex. In such cases, a note is usually an ‘explanatory or critical annotation or comment appended to a passage in a book, manuscript, etc.’ (likewise OED).

Recent scholarship has proposed to approach written artefacts as ‘evolving entities’ (Friedrich and Schwarke 2016) and suggested frameworks for the analysis of their development over the course of time (see, for example, Gumbert 2004; Andrist, Canart and Maniaci 2013). Such a stratigraphic analysis, aiming to identify the multiple ‘layers’ of written artefacts, has been successfully applied to many written artefacts, especially those produced in the course of a more or less clearly identifiable and planned ‘project’. Notes of the second type delineated above would in many cases constitute layers added to such artefacts in the course of their life cycle. However, the potential of the stratigraphic approach remains largely untapped for written artefacts that include notes of the first type and whose production and development does not follow a predefined plan or necessarily proceed in an orderly fashion.

Focusing on the multifarious manifestations of notes as material tools for the visualization, organization, and transmission of knowledge, the present workshop aims to address this gap. It invites scholars working on written artefacts involved in practices of note-taking to address them as multilayered written artefacts. Taking into account not only the development of collections of notes over time, but also the different origins and (possibly) further uses of notes, it aims to uncover patterns in the practice(s) of note-taking and the artefacts resulting from such practices.

Workshop organisers:

José Maksimczuk
Thies Staack
Jürgen Paul

Programme:

Accumulating Notes: Notebooks, Diaries and Related Examples of Everyday Writing as Multilayered Written Artefacts (PDF)

Meaning of Proportion: Extravagant Formats and Sizes of Manuscripts in the Tradition of Book Religions

When: Friday, 24 November 2023, 2:30 pm CET – Saturday, 25 November 2023, 1:00 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Proportion and format can be considered as fundamental features of books, especially of manuscripts. Presently, though, this evidence seems to attract less attention, a trend seemingly due to the advancement of digitisation. In fact, the increased availability of visual material online, so beneficial and stimulating to manuscript studies, tends to diminish scholarly awareness of varieties of dimension, as digitised codices are generally assimilated, hence uniformed, to the size of the screen.

Yet, size and format of handwritten books are seminal for their visual organisation, often being related to the status of such documents while indicating the socio-economic conditions of their formation as well as their symbolical standing and functional purpose, pointing thus also to customers and users and their practices of reading.

The workshop focuses on manuscripts of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions, being typically based on previous revelations in form of scriptures. This emphasis seems to stand to reason, as these ‘religions of the book’, as they are often called, offer particularly insightful evidence of extravagant sizes and proportions in the field of scriptural and ritual books. We know small formats of biblical manuscripts and likewise of the Koran, but also giant Bibles, oblong books of Christian liturgy or square Korans, not forgetting the Jewish tradition of recording scriptural tradition on scrolls.

The workshop will thus aim at discussing factors that determined the choice of outstanding dimensions or proportions used for books, while also taking into consideration aspects such as coincidences, aesthetical biases, and semantical messages equally having a share within such formation processes.

Workshop organisers:

Felix Heinzer
Bruno Reudenbach

Programme:

Meaning of Proportion: Extravagant Formats and Sizes of Manuscripts in the Tradition of Book Religions (PDF)

Touching, Seeing, Hearing, Reading: Voyage into Islamic Manuscripts of West Africa

Authenticating Written Artefacts

Workshop-Series: An Introduction to Studying Manuscripts as Written Artefacts

When: Friday, 27 October 2023, 1:00 pm CET – 3:00 pm CET
Where: online event

Workshop series in Arabic
Since the nineteenth century, the study of manuscripts has been carried out in two separate fields. Traditional philology has primarily concentrated on textual analysis, with the goal of reconstructing the original version of a text by comparing its various extant copies. The notion of an authentic and "correct" original text has been key to this analytical framework. In contrast, codicology has placed its emphasis on exploring the physical, material aspects of manuscripts, including, for example, binding techniques and tools or inks, as well as aspects of their paracontent.
This course seeks to combine these two approaches. It takes manuscripts as textual artefacts, i.e., as artefacts that can and need to be analysed with regard to their textual content and their materiality at the same time. The aim of the course is to show how this combined approach can shed light on a manuscript's history, including how the manuscript has changed over time and how it has been transmitted to us. In the course of five lectures focused on different case studies, we will seek to clarify what this approach means theoretically and practically. We will discuss manuscripts, learn from our own and each other’s mistakes, and explore the capabilities of this approach in charting the journeys of manuscripts in time and space, explaining the material changes that they underwent, and in some cases identifying those responsible for these journeys and these changes.
This course will be conducted entirely in Arabic. Course materials will be provided by the instructor before the beginning of the course.
This seminar provides Arabic-speaking students and scholars with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with approaches to the study of written artefacts developed in UWA. The target audience includes UHH-scholars as well as a group of students and scholars based in the Middle East who have already expressed interest in such a training. Offering training programmes in languages other than English or German and making training programmes accessible in the communities in and with which we conduct our research both advance our Equal Opportunity goals.

Workshop organisers:

Joud Nassan Agha
Said Aljoumani
Mariapaola Gritti

Missing Evidence for Ancient Cultures

Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence (CHAI)

Archival Practices Materialised: The Persian and Persianate Documents (13th–14th centuries) from al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Jerusalem

Removed and Rewritten: Palimpsests and Related Phenomena from a Cross-Cultural Perspective II

When: Monday, 10 July 2023, 9:30 am CET – Tuesday, 11 July 2023, 5:45 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

The phenomenon known as palimpsesting is one of the most radical ways in which a manuscript can be transformed. It not only implies the erasure of a part or all of a manuscript’s contents but may even result in its complete disintegration. Instead of ceasing to exist, however, the dismembered parts often find their way into other manuscripts, hence establishing a mostly hidden and fortuitous connection between two or even more written artefacts.

In recent years, the development of new technologies has provided more and more reliable methods to study palimpsested manuscripts, with a view to rendering accessible the otherwise invisible scriptio inferior. At the same time, refinements in the concept of manuscripts as evolving entities (Andrist/Canart/Maniaci 2013 and Friedrich/Schwarke 2016) provide further analytical tools for a better understanding and conceptualization of palimpsests as complex written artefacts (re)created in the course of a special production process. With the present workshop – a continuation and expansion of a first workshop on palimpsests organized by the Cluster in October 2021 – we aim to bring together experts from different fields and disciplines and encourage discussion on the essentials of palimpsests from a cross-cultural perspective. During the workshop we will discuss the following issues (among others):

the definition of ‘palimpsest’ in European and non-European manuscript cultures;
the creation of palimpsests from a technical perspective, including the actors involved in their production, division of labour, etc.;
contexts in which palimpsests were created, and the underlying motives of ‘palimpsest culture’, including aspects of cross-linguistic and cross-modal settings
new methods for identifying palimpsests and deciphering their scriptio inferior;
editorial approaches to the content of the scriptio inferior in palimpsests;
approaches to the cataloguing of palimpsests.

Workshop organisers:

Jost Gippert
José Maksimczuk
Hasmik Sargsyan
Athanasios Kerefidis

Programme:

Removed and Rewritten: Palimpsests and Related Phenomena from a Cross-Cultural Perspective II (PDF)

Early Chinese Inscribed Bronzes in European Public Collections: Craftsmanship, Provenance, Preservation

Data Linking Workshop 2023: Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing – Challenges in the Humanities

Imag(in)ing Materiality: German-Jewish Archives in the Digital Age

When: Monday, 5 June 2023, 6:15 pm CET – Wednesday, 7 June 2023, 6:00 pm CET
Where:

Jewish history and German-Jewish history in the modern era all the more so is shaped by the experience of – oftentimes forced – migration. Writers, scholars and thinkers have migrated and so have their papers – but not necessarily at the same times or to the same places. Researchers of German-Jewish intellectual history and culture are constantly faced with the challenge of globally dispersed archives and collections. A challenge, that might partly be overcome by means of digital access to the respective artefacts.

Based on the results of a joint digitization project with the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem encompassing 24 German-Jewish archives and collections from the 19th and 20th century with a total of more than 700,000 pages, this workshop seeks to explore the academic benefits and challenges of large-scale digitization with a particular focus on materiality. It thus constitutes a hands-on, critical evaluation of the promises of digital humanities. With individual case studies on the recently digitized archives by international scholars the workshop will address questions like: What are the scholarly advantages of digital access compared to accessing the physical ar-chive, what are possible disadvantages and blind spots, i.e.: What is lost and what is found in digitization? What kind of new questions and arguments can be introduced into the scholarly discourse? Which modes of international collaboration can be established? What are the (tech-nical, institutional, intellectual, legal) preconditions for working with digital representations? How do we handle large amounts of digital data in a productive and sustainable way? How can digitization projects creating massive cultural collections reach beyond the academic realm?

Workshop organisers:

Sebastian Schirrmeister
Giuseppe Veltri

Programme:

Imag(in)ing Materiality: German-Jewish Archives in the Digital Age (PDF)

Inscribing Funerary Space(s)

When: Thursday, 30 March 2023, 9:30 am CET – Saturday, 1 April 2023, 1:15 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Workshop organisers:

Kaja Harter-Uibopuu
Leah Mascia
Peter Schmidt

Programme:

Inscribing Funerary Space(s) (PDF)

The Body of the Spoken Word: The Interconnection of Ritual, Text and Manuscript in Bon and Naxi Traditions

Inscribing Initiation: Written Artefacts in Rites of Passage

When: Thursday, 19 January 2023, 6:00 pm CET – Saturday, 21 January 2023, 1:15 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Nearly all cultures of the world, both contemporary and now defunct ancient, know initiatory acts by which a person's transition to another social, religious, or political status or standing is ritually expressed and exploited. As a rule, these rituals regularly consist of a combination of acts of speech and signs. Additionally, these acts often involved objects that were necessary to bring about or to guarantee the agency and efficacy of the ritual, or even to record the new status of the person on whom the act is performed. Often these artefacts operate with writing, either by writing something down on or with them, or by bearing writing characters themselves. In the context of the first group of objects fall, for example, documents like the certificate of a monastic profession, which is signed on the main altar of the monastery church during the ritual, but also matriculation books, in which the name and matriculation number of the newly admitted student are entered during the matriculation. While the written form in these cases has more of a documentary function, inscriptions on other objects, such as on Jewish circumcision knives and blankets, sometimes also on baptismal fonts, as well as on oil ampoules associated with Christian ordination ceremonies, have an interpretive function, as they provide information about the content of the (liturgical) act through the inscriptions (and images) attached to them. In some rituals, the affixing of characters or inscriptions is itself part of the performance of the ritual. On the one hand, this refers, for example, to the Egyptian consecration of kings, in whose course characters are affixed to the hand of the pharaoh and then licked off and almost physically absorbed by him. On the other hand, at the beginning of the consecration of churches in the Middle Ages, for example, the Latin and Greek alphabets were inscribed by the bishop with his staff into a heap of ashes on the floor of the church to be consecrated.

The conference will explore the phenomenon of writing and inscription in initiation rituals in a broad cultural-historical context. In doing so, such rites of passage will be analysed from an intercultural, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective beyond Europe. Especially the objects used in this context will be examined, whether they are documents recording the new status of the person or inscribed objects used in the context of the ritual. Here, the double character of the word ‘inscribe’ will be explicitly assumed, which recurs both to the inscriptions on or with the artefacts and to the inscription as a kind of certification and perpetuation. A particular interest is the materiality of the objects used or possibly produced in the context of the ritual or ceremony, which is often constitutive for the success and completion of the initiation ritual.

Workshop organiser:

Jochen Hermann Vennebusch

Programme:

Inscribing Initiation: Written Artefacts in Rites of Passage (PDF)

Conference El Escorial

Typologies of East Asian Maps in a Global Perspective

When: Friday, 2 December 2022, 12:00 pm CET – Saturday, 3 December 2022, 4:15 pm CET
Where: online event

The aim of this workshop is to discuss some methodological approaches to developing a clearly articulated typology of East Asian maps, which is still missing.

The extant research literature tends to distinguish between two major mapping traditions: ‘Western and scientific’ (i.e. based on advanced techniques of cartographic survey) and ‘Chinese and traditional’ (i.e. stemming from autochthonous cartography). The major drawback of this distinction is that it ignores the multifarious character of the Chinese cartographic tradition, which has at least two major sub-traditions. Following the pioneering studies of the recognised American-Taiwanese geographer Hsu Mei-ling 徐美玲 (1932–2009), Cordell Yee, author of the latest reference study of the history of Chinese cartography (1994), labelled them as ‘analytical/mathematical’ versus ‘descriptive’. The tentative character of these distictions calls attention to the urgent necessity to clarify the criteria of classifying East Asian maps.

We propose to re-evaluate these distinctions and to consider other classifications of East Asian maps in the context of the global history of cartography. In particular, we would like to further develop the approach initiated by Joseph Needham and Wang Ling 王鈴 (1959), who systematically investigated Chinese maps in comparison with other cartographical traditions. This global approach has since been pushed back by a tendency to narrow specialisation in map studies; in the case of East Asian maps, the complexity of sinographic writing reinforces this tendency to take isolated views.

Diversity of cartographic traditions is not unique to East Asia. For instance, the history of European cartography distinguishes between mappaemundi relying on the Biblical conceptions of terrestrial space, and two incompatible traditions of ‘scientific cartography’ – maps rooted in Ptolemaic geography and early modern nautical charts (Gaspar Alves and Leitão, 2019). The interesting difference between East Asian and European cartography is that while mappaemundi and the early modern charts gradually left the cartographic scene, pre-modern types of East Asian maps continued to be produced and reproduced well up to the 20th century.

And Now in 3D: On AI and Digital Twins and Their Application on 3D Data

Identifying Models and Copies on the Basis of Material Evidence: At the Intersection Between Manuscript Studies and Philology

The Intertwined World of the Oral and Written Transmission of Sacred Traditions in the Middle East

Merchants’ Manuscript Culture in the Premodern World: Merchants and Their Agents in a Comparative Perspective

Illuminating the Eastern Christian World: Manuscripts, Illuminators and Scribes

When: Thursday, 30 June 2022, 9:00 am CET – Friday, 1 July 2022, 7:00 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

The past decade has witnessed a steadily growing interest in the arts and manuscript cultures of the Eastern Christian traditions of Armenia, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia and Syria fostered, in part, by mounting calls for the social and historical sciences to broaden their focus to include objects, people, and regions that have been traditionally marginalized in academia or viewed as peripheral in discourses about the medieval West and Byzantium. Within this evolving context – which has seen shifts in political and scholarly parameters and a strong convergence towards the idea of globalizing the “Middle Ages” – recent research on the manuscript traditions of the Eastern Christian world has developed along two distinct but complementary lines. The first, aims to develop comparative approaches and perspectives to these manuscript traditions that consider instances of cross-Mediterranean exchange and continuity while also relativizing and resisting normative notions of centre-periphery. The second, uses manuscripts to destabilize notions of cultural uniformity and national or religious identity, by locating instances of heterodoxy, idiosyncrasy, cultural mixing and pluralism within the multifaceted groups that are today conveniently but problematically subsumed under categories such as “Oriental Orthodox.” By bringing together these two fields of inquiry, this conference sets out to explore the role that manuscripts, especially those bearing illustrations, can play in improving our understanding of the transmission, reception, adaptation and reinterpretation of texts, images, matter, material practices, and ideas, as well as the movement of book makers, owners, and readers across the Mediterranean world and beyond between late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The participants to this workshop, which has the goal of allowing contributors to feedback into their respective papers before submitting them for publication, are all considered world-leading experts in their respective fields. The book sets out to overturn conventional Western-driven narratives of the history of book making and using in favour of an approach that centres on the traditions of Africa and Asia and that focuses in particular on the material and artistic traditions of the Oriental Christian world. Their papers will contribute to reframing the history of the codex and its illustration in more globalized terms, thus meeting the growing demand for publications on a more inclusive Middle Ages.

Workshop Organisers:

Alessandro Bausi
Sophia Dege-Müller
Jacopo Gnisci
Jonas Karlsson
Vitagrazia Pisani
Theo M. van Lint

Programme:

Illuminating the Eastern Christian World: Manuscripts, Illuminators and Scribes (PDF)

Lost and Found Manuscripts: Binding ‘Waste’ and Interdisciplinary Methods of Research

When: Wednesday, 22 June 2022, 2:30 pm CET – Thursday, 23 June 2022, 6:15 pm CET
Where: online event

The term ‘binding waste’ encompasses any number of written artefacts that were reused (as pastedowns, sewing guards, spine linings, coverings, etc.) to construct a new codex. This practice of reusing documents and book fragments was often a highly meaningful practice that went well beyond mere ‘waste recycling’, allowing us to observe how new users ascribed new meanings to them. Importantly, reuse practices have preserved the texts and objects that illuminate changing reading practices, literary tastes, and documentary cultures. Yet, researchers of such practices and artefacts face unique material and methodological challenges. Most obviously, the reused materials’ original context — e.g., geographical provenance, evidence of users, even text identification — was obfuscated when manuscript producers transformed the remnants of now-lost volumes or document collections into the structural components of new codices. Often, the context is doubly obscured because 19th- and 20th-century users extracted the reused material from codices to access texts that would have otherwise remained hidden, without adequately documenting the deconstruction process. A major challenge for the field is thus to continue developing non-invasive methods to study reuse practices, identify new texts, and reconstruct objects.

This workshop gathers together scholars from the physical sciences and the humanities to generate dialogue on the challenges posed by reused binding material, as well as some of the existing solutions. It comes at a time when the field is experiencing exciting developments. Libraries, for example, are rapidly cataloguing and digitizing the binding fragments in their collections, making it possible to digitally reunite countless disparate fragments. Methods are being developed to discern the original context of disbound fragments from the few remaining clues. Scientists, meanwhile, are repurposing existing technologies — such as CT and micro-CT scanning, infrared thermography (IRT), and macro X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy — to enable scholars to read the fragments’ text non-invasively through the exterior binding. This workshop aims to bring these interdisciplinary approaches together to gauge the state of the field and develop new avenues of research.

Programme:

Lost and Found Manuscripts: Binding ‘Waste’ and Interdisciplinary Methods of Research (PDF)

Legal Texts and Scholarly Communities as Reflected in the Raqqada Collection

Mixing Languages and Scripts: Material from Manuscripts and Inscriptions

When: Thursday, 19 May 2022, 2:00 pm CET – Saturday, 21 May 2022, 2:15 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Many, if not all languages are influenced by others to some degree through the processes of lexical borrowing and structural interference which lead to loanwords and grammatical stratification. Written artefacts not only contain evidence of the complex coexistence of different languages attested in countless cases (Sumerian and Akkadian, Arabic and African languages, Arabic and Persian, Coptic and Greek, Latin and German, Khmer and Tai, Chinese and Japanese, et cetera), but also attest to established or innovative practices dealing with elements unfamiliar to a given language or writing system, but not to its agents and participants. Mapping respective scribal practices might prove especially fruitful in case of written artefacts produced by multilingual and multicultural societies as well as in areas where different cultures of writing overlap.

On the one hand, the inclusion of elements in another language may lead to an enrichment and extension of the writing system in use due to pragmatic reasons, for example to render the external elements as accurately as possible. On the other hand, loanwords and borrowings may also be absorbed and integrated with no adaptation of the writing system. Furthermore, a process of simplification also takes place with the implementation of printing in a manuscript culture, this technology being less flexible and necessarily more standardised than handwriting.

The interplay of various languages and scripts in written artefacts demonstrates the importance of studying these artefacts in their social and cultural embedment, within which the agents and participants of literacy practices acted.

Mixed languages and scripts are a shared feature of manuscripts and inscriptions. Thus we aim to bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to compare practices evidenced in the epigraphic material with those discernible in manuscript cultures.

Programme:

Mixing Languages and Scripts: Material from Manuscripts and Inscriptions (PDF)

The Persistence of Manuscript Cultures in Modern Times: Change and Revival

A Tale of Searching, Finding, and Keeping: Archives in the Greco-Roman World

Manuscript Rituals of the Bon and Naxi Traditions

When: Friday, 18 March 2022, 9:00 am CET – Saturday, 19 March 2022, 7:00 pm CET
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Manuscripts have been essential in supporting the efforts of Bon monks, nuns and hereditary priests to preserve their unique culture and rituals, as well as the attempts of scholars elsewhere to understand not only the Bon religion but also the early cultural and intellectual history of Central Asia. Manuscripts account for the entire range of Bonpo literary production, from all the major canonical works such as the Bonpo Kanjur, or the so-called New Collection of Bonpo Katen, to the collected writing of famous masters, and the plethora of ritual texts that have been unexpectedly coming to light in many parts of the region during the first decade of the twenty-first century. These manuscripts are of great importance for gaining new insights into largely unknown cultural developments on the Tibetan Plateau and its connections to other traditions present in the region.

There is also a growing body of evidence to suggest that a connection between the rituals of the Naxi dongba priests and those of the Bon religion of Tibet is more than merely speculative. However, despite a growing number of scholars exploring Bon and Naxi manuscript traditions, there is still only little evidence for a possible common ground which both traditions may share. While some examples of Bon manuscripts recently revealed may date from as early as the ninth century, most of the extinct Naxi dongba pictographic ritual texts were produced within the last two centuries. However, most of physical manuscripts of both traditions have not been dated, and so far have attracted only little attention as material objects. While irrefutable instances of Bon-Naxi connections may be rare, the case for a link is reinforced via the ritual texts of a class of priests in Gansu and Sichuan known as le’u. This very large corpus of material – which continues to grow as new discoveries are made – contains texts that seem to provide a bridge between the archaic rituals of Central Tibetan Bon and those of the Naxi. Furthermore, certain aspects of Naxi ritual themselves may elucidate mysteries surrounding Tibetan ritual. Similarities may also be seen in mythical narratives and figures, iconography, or even habits of using the same materials and technologies. Naxi paper has been thought to be unique, with influence from, among other things, the papermaking traditions of the Tibetan community. But many questions remain when we consider this region with its complex history of interaction between various ethnic groups.

The previous workshops were intended to be an open-ended discussion on the existing Bon manuscript collections which, besides being a record of history and religion in its textual sphere, are also material objects being a part of sustainable cultural world heritage. Along the same lines, we would like to continue an interdisciplinary discussion that will make it possible to see Bon manuscripts in the wider perspective of manuscript studies. However, on this occasion we would like to place the emphasis on the Bon-Naxi connections found in both traditions and revealed by multidisciplinary studies. The participants are specialists of different academic disciplines, and will present their research on a variety of topics including different collections of Bon and Naxi manuscripts, the concepts and history of both traditions, and the science and technology of book studies.

Programme:

Manuscript Rituals of the Bon and Naxi Traditions (PDF)

Short, Swift, Secret: Writing and Reading the Shorthand Manuscript

The Greco-Roman Theatre as Inscribed Space

Authority of Layers – Layers of Authority: On the Internal Dynamics of Multilayered Written Artefacts and their Cultural Contexts'

When: Thursday, 2 December 2021, 2:00 pm CET – Friday, 3 December 2021, 1:30 pm CET
Where: online event

Many, if not most written artefacts are shaped by complex processes of production, use, and textual transmission. Far from being stable, let alone unchanging entities, written artefacts can aggregate ‘layers’ by which their contents are enlarged, deleted, or replaced over the course of time. While some written artefacts happen to evolve into multilayered artefacts at some point during their ‘lives’ due to their users’ engagement with them (e.g. a manuscript to which a reader added glosses on difficult words), others are planned and produced to become multilayered from the beginning (e.g. diaries, guestbooks, calendars). Building on previous research that has taken the fruitful approach of considering written artefacts as ‘evolving entities’ (e.g. Gumbert 2004, Friedrich/Schwarke 2016), this workshop will further develop the study of multilayered written artefacts by focusing on the authority, hierarchy, and interplay of their layers. The formatting and content of new layers necessarily influence – and are at the same time influenced by – previously created layers. Apart from the plain fact that there is less creative freedom in adding to an existing written artefact than in creating an entirely new one, the extent to which a new layer is likely to change (or: intrude upon) the existing layers is closely connected to their respective authority, as perceived by the originator of the new layer. Accordingly, there often exists an explicit or implicit hierarchy between the layers of a multilayered written artefact, which is not necessarily following the chronology of their creation. The present workshop will bring together scholars working on different types of multilayered written artefacts from cultures around the globe in order to further explore these phenomena.

Programme:

'Authority of Layers – Layers of Authority: On the Internal Dynamics of Multilayered Written Artefacts and their Cultural Contexts' (PDF)

Texts within the Material World: Assemblages, Contexts, Networks in Ancient Societies from Africa to Asia

Seals and Sealing: A Survey of Materials, Forms and Functions

Manuscript Albums: Collecting and Compiling Handwritten Items

Coloured Inscriptions and Analytical Techniques

Removed and Rewritten: Palimpsests and Related Phenomena from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Archives and Archival Practices: Documentary Corpora from the Islamicate World

‘On Parchment, with Wooden Boards’: Hebrew and Non-Hebrew Terms Applied to Jewish Books in Historical Perspective

Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed… and Drawn: Multigraphic Graffiti Across Times and Cultures

Manuscripts at the Service of Epigraphy: Master Copies, Templates, and Other Exemplars in the Production of Pre-Modern Inscriptions

When: Tuesday, 29 June 2021, 10:00 am CET – 5:00 pm CET
Where: online event

One of the important albeit generally neglected features of formal inscriptions is the fact that they were often produced on the basis of a manuscript exemplar (Vorlage), be it a tailor-made master copy or a generic template. As any copying process, the transfer between the manuscript and epigraphic medium was not free of errors and distortion. This was especially true in cases where the production of a whole set of inscriptions followed a single exemplar. Over the past two centuries, scholars in various fields have only occasionally treated inscriptions as witnesses of their long-perished exemplars, yet even these sporadic instances succeeded to manifest how the text-critical approach can enhance our understanding of inscriptions as well as of the underlying manuscript cultures.

However, by considering the transfer between the two media, not only can we gain a better understanding of occasional mistakes or textual discrepancies, but more importantly, we are compelled to appreciate all other possible facets of the relationship between an inscription and its exemplar, including the aspect of form. The questions we should ask are thus not limited to just how faithfully the text of an inscription followed that of its master copy – we should also inquire whether the visual organization (size, script, layout, colour, etc.) or decorative motives of an inscription were assigned in the exemplar, and whether or not they were carried out successfully in the inscription. In short, how faithful are our inscriptions to their original design? And how was the challenge of the transfer tackled in different epigraphic traditions?

These questions are impossible to answer without considering the materiality of inscriptions’ exemplars and practices related to their use. Towards this end, this workshop presents pioneering contributions undertaking the daunting task of recovering information about such (often lost) manuscripts and related epigraphic practices around the globe, exploring what the exemplars looked like, what information they contained, how exactly they were used in the production ofinscriptions, or how they differed depending on the materiality of the epigraphic medium. By bringing to the fore the complex manuscript background of the epigraphic production and considering it in a comparative perspective, this workshop aims at refining our understanding of inscriptions not only as outcomes of textual composition but also of the fertile tension between prescriptiveness and creativity in the chaîne opératoire of their production.

Programme:

Manuscripts at the Service of Epigraphy: Master Copies, Templates, and Other Exemplars in the Production of Pre-Modern Inscriptions (PDF)

Writing of a Faun: A Signature Piece of 20th Century Dance and its Scripting

"Tied and Bound": How to Keep Things Together (or Not?)

When: Thursday, 20 May 2021, 3:30 pm CET – Saturday, 22 May, 11:30 am CET
Where: online event

Assuming that ‘codicological units’ exist in whatever manuscript cultures and that they are composed of discrete elements, the issue of cohesion of these elements is a general and even universal one. Every manuscript culture has therefore developed physical devices to keep writing surfaces together and these devices can be generally categorized under binding. Like other features of manuscript culture, so also cohesion of these elements is placed along a continuum, within which various degrees of cohesion, coherence, and stability are discernible—loose-leaves, codices disligati, as well as ‘soft bindings’, as opposed to regularly bound codices in codex cultures, and parallel cases from bamboo slips, palm-leaf manuscripts, rolls, peculiar arrangements of tree-bark manuscripts etc. in other cultures as well. ‘Keeping things together’—or not, that is to be able to disarray and single out quickly and easily one or more discrete elements when needed—is a central concern in archiving, ordering, and preserving as well, and has actual implications in all related practices, like collecting materials, filing cards, making boxes and cases, and retrieving in case. Well including all codex-centred binding topics, the conference also aims to explore cases where binding is either an intermediate stage in the production (for example in the case of ‘tacketing for binding’, as investigated by Jan-Peter Gumbert), or a peculiar challenge of its own (for example while excerpting from large collections of manuscripts), or a special kind of binding is required by the peculiar manuscript or artefact in place (for example in case of concertina book forms, like the concertina-like ‘liturgical fans’, Eth. marawǝḥ, Gr. rhipídion or hexaptérygon, Lat. flabellum etc.). Discussion on sociology of binding is also welcome—who binds? who are the professional binders? which their tasks and how specialized their skills?—, and why binding could not be accommodated in the theoretical framework of La Syntaxe du Codex? Hang on! it is going to be a ‘dense & tense’ conference!

Programme:

"Tied and Bound": How to Keep Things Together (or Not?) (PDF)

Recipes and Recipe Books Across Manuscript Cultures

Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Research on Graffiti

Stenographical Studies

History, Art and Epic in Medieval Manuscripts

Approaches to Palimpsests: The Greek and Caucasian Traditions

African Voices in Islamic Manuscripts from Mali

Maps and Colours

Śāradā: Goddess, Learning, Script. On the Sanskrit manuscript culture of Kashmir

By One’s Own Hand – For One’s Own Use

Bridging the Gap

Lectures

Thursday Lectures

Informal Talks

UWA Conference 2023

Studying Written Artefacts: Challenges and Perspectives

The main conference of the Cluster of Excellence UWA took place over three days of panel presentations structured in three parallel sessions, from 27–29 September 2023.

For a long time, researchers have debated when writing was invented and written artefacts first produced. They have asked whether this was a peculiarity of homo sapiens and what writing actually is, considering whether posing such a question is, in fact, methodologically possible. Most researchers can agree that the invention and use of writing has had such a profound impact on the history of humanity that its consequences continue even in the most sophisticated digital applications, even though manuscripts and writings still remain with us.

‘Studying Written Artefacts: Challenges and Perspectives’ provided a unique forum for sharing experiences and views among the international community working on written artefacts, showcasing pioneering research, and developing new ideas.

The conference focused on emerging research topics and innovative methodological approaches from within the humanities and natural and computer sciences, on the study of creation, transmission, and archiving of written artefacts. It also featured contributions on single written artefacts important for their revealing features or their challenging typology and categorisation, and small and large scale theoretical reflections on written artefacts, and which transcend the study of particular geographical areas and apply comparative and/or global perspectives.

Programme

Studying Written Artefacts: Challenges and Perspectives. Schedule (PDF)

Booklet of abstracts

Studying Written Artefacts: Challenges and Perspectives. Abstracts (PDF)

Public Research Events

Lecture Series

Digital Lunch Seminar Series

Current Editions

Previous Editions

Handle with Care: Cultural Heritage and Ethics in Manuscript Studies

Previous Editions

Equal Opportunity Lecture Series

Previous Editions

Seminar Series

Studying Persianate Written Artefacts (in Persian)

All seminars of the series

An Introduction to Studying Manuscripts as Written Artefacts (in Arabic)

Previous editions

Workshops

Inscribing Love: The Materialisation of Affects in a Global Perspective

CHAI 2024 - 4th Workshop on Humanities-Centred AI at KI2024

Materiality of Sufi Manuscripts

From Manuscript to Sound: Colonial Dynamics in Peruvian Musical Manuscript Culture (17th–19th Centuries)

Workshop and Concert

The Ecology of the Physiologus: Texts, Images, Manuscripts

Musical Heritage Across Borders: Materiality as an Indication of Distribution Channels

Manuscripts of Natural Philosophy

The Calligraphy of Tagging

PIER Workshop: Written Artefacts and Materials Science

Woodblock Printing: A Cross-Cultural Approach

Manuscripts with Sample Letters in Late Medieval Eurasia

Manuscript Flows in Highland Asia: Social Networks and Material Culture

From East to West: Christian Literacy in the First Millennium

Multilingualism in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond after Alexander the Great

Facing New Materials: Changes of Writing Substances, Implements and Supports in Manuscript Cultures

Accumulating Notes: Notebooks, Diaries and Related Examples of Everyday Writing as Multilayered Written Artefacts

Meaning of Proportion: Extravagant Formats and Sizes of Manuscripts in the Tradition of Book Religions

Touching, Seeing, Hearing, Reading: Voyage into Islamic Manuscripts of West Africa

Authenticating Written Artefacts

Workshop-Series: An Introduction to Studying Manuscripts as Written Artefacts

Missing Evidence for Ancient Cultures

Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence (CHAI)

Archival Practices Materialised: The Persian and Persianate Documents (13th–14th centuries) from al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Jerusalem

Removed and Rewritten: Palimpsests and Related Phenomena from a Cross-Cultural Perspective II

Early Chinese Inscribed Bronzes in European Public Collections: Craftsmanship, Provenance, Preservation

Data Linking Workshop 2023: Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing – Challenges in the Humanities

Imag(in)ing Materiality: German-Jewish Archives in the Digital Age

Inscribing Funerary Space(s)

The Body of the Spoken Word: The Interconnection of Ritual, Text and Manuscript in Bon and Naxi Traditions

Inscribing Initiation: Written Artefacts in Rites of Passage

Conference El Escorial

Typologies of East Asian Maps in a Global Perspective

And Now in 3D: On AI and Digital Twins and Their Application on 3D Data

Identifying Models and Copies on the Basis of Material Evidence: At the Intersection Between Manuscript Studies and Philology

The Intertwined World of the Oral and Written Transmission of Sacred Traditions in the Middle East

Merchants’ Manuscript Culture in the Premodern World: Merchants and Their Agents in a Comparative Perspective

Illuminating the Eastern Christian World: Manuscripts, Illuminators and Scribes

Lost and Found Manuscripts: Binding ‘Waste’ and Interdisciplinary Methods of Research

Legal Texts and Scholarly Communities as Reflected in the Raqqada Collection

Mixing Languages and Scripts: Material from Manuscripts and Inscriptions

The Persistence of Manuscript Cultures in Modern Times: Change and Revival

A Tale of Searching, Finding, and Keeping: Archives in the Greco-Roman World

Manuscript Rituals of the Bon and Naxi Traditions

Short, Swift, Secret: Writing and Reading the Shorthand Manuscript

The Greco-Roman Theatre as Inscribed Space

Authority of Layers – Layers of Authority: On the Internal Dynamics of Multilayered Written Artefacts and their Cultural Contexts'

Texts within the Material World: Assemblages, Contexts, Networks in Ancient Societies from Africa to Asia

Seals and Sealing: A Survey of Materials, Forms and Functions

Manuscript Albums: Collecting and Compiling Handwritten Items

Coloured Inscriptions and Analytical Techniques

Removed and Rewritten: Palimpsests and Related Phenomena from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Archives and Archival Practices: Documentary Corpora from the Islamicate World

‘On Parchment, with Wooden Boards’: Hebrew and Non-Hebrew Terms Applied to Jewish Books in Historical Perspective

Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed… and Drawn: Multigraphic Graffiti Across Times and Cultures

Manuscripts at the Service of Epigraphy: Master Copies, Templates, and Other Exemplars in the Production of Pre-Modern Inscriptions

Writing of a Faun: A Signature Piece of 20th Century Dance and its Scripting

"Tied and Bound": How to Keep Things Together (or Not?)

Recipes and Recipe Books Across Manuscript Cultures

Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Research on Graffiti

Stenographical Studies

History, Art and Epic in Medieval Manuscripts

Approaches to Palimpsests: The Greek and Caucasian Traditions

African Voices in Islamic Manuscripts from Mali

Maps and Colours