Identifying offcut zone parchment in medieval manuscripts
Date
2019
Authors
Lahey, Stephanie J.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ManuSciences
Abstract
Medieval European book artisans sometimes recruited offcuts—flawed, irregular, lower-quality parchment scraps created as by-products of the parchment-making process—as writing support. Given the less desirable traits of these ‘seconds’, attention to how they were used might shed light on concealed aspects of medieval book production and readership, such as informal or downmarket copying. Yet investigating offcut use first requires a reasonably reliable strategy for identifying offcuts. This paper summarizes a novel, biochemically informed, corpus-based study which evaluated 21 features specified in the existing literature on offcuts, ultimately establishing a preliminary set of diagnostic traits via linear regression analysis.
Description
Keywords
Parchment, Offcuts, Statistical modelling, Linear regression
Citation
Lahey, S. J. (2019). Identifying offcut zone parchment in medieval manuscripts. Proceedings of ManuSciences, Franco-German spring school organized by EphéNum – Digital Humanities, 68-70.