Date/Time
Date(s) - 29 Sep 2014
5:15 PM - 5:15 PM
Location
Class of 1978 Pavilion, Special Collections Center
Category(ies) No Categories
Monday, 29 September
Workshop in the History of Material Texts, University of Pennsylvania
Matthew Collins (University of York), “Manuscripts: The Archaeolozoology of Animal Skin.”
5:15pm, Class of 1978 Pavilion in the Kislak Center on the 6th Floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.
Matthew writes:
“As Peter Tiersma has argued, writing made it possible to begin
distinguishing myth from history. If we were able to capture and map the
path of each and every written idea it would look like a fractal tree, with
branches expanding as concepts are developed, refined and dissected.
Historians try to reconstruct the diversification of these ideas and many
see parallels with our planets other great writing schema, the chemical
language of DNA. The rules of DNA are simpler (although this simplicity is
nuanced by new discoveries). DNA is the book of life and most geneticists
at some point try to recapitulate the history of a population or group, by
identifying errors in DNA transcription, missing or newly incorporated text
found in different populations or organisms. The sheer quantity of dated
animals skins held in archives across Europe is staggering. We estimate
that in the UK there are more skins (as parchment) from the last 800 years
held in libraries and archives than there are sheep living in the island
today.
More than a decade ago researchers revealed that the genetic code of the
animal was not destroyed when its skin was used for parchment production.
However the last year has been a tipping point for parchment research as a
consequence of the ability to use the waste from conventional conservation
treatment for protein and DNA sequencing. We will overview results coming
out from the EU funded CodeX and Palimpsest projects and consider a change
in the landscape of codicology, both in terms of the balance of the
relationships between science and the humanities, but also in the scale and
scope of questions that can now be addressed.”
All are welcome! Those who do not hold University of Pennsylvania ID cards
should bring another form of photo identification in order to enter the
library building.