Scientific Service Projects

Modern scientific means for digitally imaging, evaluating and visualizing pages of manuscripts that have been compromised through damage or intentional modifications, such as erasure or palimpsestation, will be used to recover script or letters no longer visible to the naked eye. Existing equipment will be augmented with the most recent technology. This scholarly service project will provide multispectral and other types of specialized imaging for several of the sub-projects in the CSMC. At the same time, in close cooperation with the other two service projects (Z02 and Z03), it will develop an interdisciplinary methodological approach to the use of scientific procedures in analyzing manuscripts. The results will be published in a guidebook.

Principal Investigator: Christian Brockmann

Research Associates: Boryana Pouvkova, Claire Rachel MacDonald

Material-scientific investigations provide important data for answering cultural-historical questions that cannot be solved by historical and philological methods alone. The distinct materiality of each manuscript is the result of a wide variety of influences (production, storage, restoration, preservation). The goal of this scientific service project is to examine, by means of a mobile laboratory, on site and without causing damage, these influences on manuscripts. The goal is to validate existing scientific methods and to develop new procedures. This mobile laboratory will provide material-technological support for the various sub-projects of CSMC.

Principal Investigator: Oliver Hahn

Research Associates: Ira Rabin, Emanuel Kindzorra

Work in this project will have three goals, (i) to develop and apply innovative computer-based methods for analyzing and comparing manuscripts, using visual layout and character features, (ii) to apply these methods to research questions raised in other projects of CSMC, and (iii) to integrate the methods in a workplace for computer-based manuscript analysis which can be operated by computer lay-persons.

Principal Investigators: Bernd Neumann, Leonie Dreschler-Fischer

Research Associates: Rainer Herzog, Arved Solth