Back Home	Seminar on Records and Archives in Society
Course This Week Past Reedings History Archives Projects Students	Silvia Hansman, Hist0647,4.19.99. McCrank, L., "Documenting Reconquest and Reform: the Growth of Archives in the Medieval Crown of Aragon", American Archivist, vol.51, spring,1993. Documenting Reconquest and Reform: the Growth of Archives in the Medieval Crown of Aragon The paper describes local developments that contributed to the growth in document production and the formation of archives in Northern Spain: Reconquest of the Catalan frontier: from 718 starts a process of territorial expansion that includes the consolidation of strong house holds, the unification of Aragon (Roman law) with Catalunya (Visigothic law) and incorporation of vernacular cultures, local dialects and minorities. Usatges: in a codified form for comparative study and to use in court. Government used writing as a means to extend their power overr greater distances and over a increasingly heterogeneous population. Gregorian Reform: local clergy imitate Roman use of writing to attest the veracity of local property rights and authority. Consequences: Search for material from the past, "forgery" and detection of forgery. As a consequence there is an escalation in documentation and formalization of record production. Starts developing practices of appraisal for the admissibility of records as evidence. Cistercian order: function as frontier institutions to resettle New Catalunya. They produce one of the greatest continuous series in European archives. Main archival development: Specialized archives distinct from libraries: The Archivo de la Corona de Aragon in Barcelona was created "To control and preserve the documents writings and registries which are stored in our Royal Archives at Barcelona". Transition between information technologies: The Libber Feudorum Maior (870 folios) attests the experimentation and vacillation between codified manuscripts as books and other form of loose record control. Starting with loose manuscript, experimenting whit arrange or copy into books that did not show enough flexibility and returning to loose documentation. Communication technology The transition from oral communication to written records in the XII century was as extreme as the change to electronic records and telecommunication in the second half of the XX century. Pre-literate but formal memory: Most business was conducted orally either personally or by envoys that memorized messages. First-hand witness were evidence. A gradual ascendancy of written communication (XI century) was previous to the formation of archives. A period of creative experimentation (1150-1250) The effect of this process in archival management: centralization use of written texts in litigation production: copying, standardization, punctuation, terminology cross reference by toponimical and subject indexes abstracts registration systems for: retrieval and authentification Historiography Archival historiography needs revision: The history of archives is a misconstruction. It is presented as a modern invention (post French Revolution) based on classical models with a "discontinuous" (medieval) history. The emphasis of research (Posner) was in large official archives identified with Muslim and Byzantine empires rather than in the Latin west not acknowledging new developments until XIV (260) Anglo American experience added to this view because is far from the post classical Mediterranean world. Medieval archives where considered fragmented and inconsequential to archival history (especially neglected was Spain and Portugal). By paying attention to house hold archives, local records, small scale archives of shorter duration, a more subtle continuity may be found in function rather than scale.