Transmediating historical artifacts : Johann Christoph Gatterer’s works on diplomatics and the reproduction of documentary evidence for eighteenth-century historical research
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| Main Author: | |
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| Publication Date: | 2022 |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | spa |
| Source: | Repositório Institucional da UnB |
| Download full: | https://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/45254 https://doi.org/10.5944/etfiv.35.2022.34557 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8483-8235 |
Summary: | From the perspective of Early Modern historical sciences, what was at stake when documentary evidence was examined through reproductions? What were their functions and limits within eighteenth-century expert opinions on the identification and authenticity of historical documents? How aware were eighteenth-century scholars of their mediality? In this paper, I explore these questions by examining four different engravings of the very same historical evidence. These were produced within the context of a dispute about the identification of a gravestone discovered in 1770. This dispute was arbitrated by the director of the Royal Institute of Historical Sciences at the University of Göttingen, Johann Christoph Gatterer (1727–1799). Here, I argue that when historical documents were examined through reproductions, the artifacts of greatest evidentiary value are not what they visualized but, instead, the artifacts through which historical information was classified, displayed, and conveyed. |