Back Home	Seminar on Records and Archives in Society
Course This Week Past Readings History Archives Projects	Jeff Frederick, HY 648 Joseph F. O'Callaghan. "Origin and Development of Archival Record-Keeping in the Crown of Castile-Leon." in Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal, Lawrence J McCrank ed, New York: Haworth Press, 1993, 3-18. Origin and Development of Archival Record-Keeping in the Crown of Castile-Leon Archival practices and institutions were slow to develop in the medieval kingdom of Castile-Leon. Few individual documents from early Spanish history such as charters recording the sale or disposition of property, tax assessments, or court records have survived because of haphazard collecting practices and the traveling nature of royal courts. Some of the surviving material is of questionable authenticity because of inconsistent transcription practices. Ecclesiastical institutions were the best archival institutions, in part, because of the volume of land transactions, the permanent nature of the resident scribes, and the storage capacity of their monasteries and cathedrals. A shift toward a more systematic system of national archivy emerged in the High Middle Ages. Elites, church officials, and royals realized land disputes could be resolved if legal documentation could be produced. Castile-Leon era royals were inundated with increasing amounts of correspondence and attempted to devise strategies for insuring the accurate recording of documents, official sealing protocols for attesting to validity, and rudimentary security mechanisms to prevent forgery or theft. Chronic disorganization, the honorific appointments of chancery leadership, and the lack of centralized storage facilities remained problems until two provisions emerged: an expanded system of document registration managed by permanent registrars simplified the recording of administrative and judicial matters, and the creation of specific repositories to house the collections. As a result, from the twelfth century onward, the quantity of records and the quality of their preservation increased dramatically. This overview of Castile-Leon is a worthy addition to the pool of additional readings.