Project description
New tech finds hidden texts
Beneath centuries of scraped-off ink lie lost voices of the past. In early medieval Northern Italy, ancient manuscripts were erased and reused, creating palimpsests, hidden layers of history waiting to be revealed. These recycled texts hold clues to the cultural rebirth that sparked the Carolingian Renaissance, bridging the gap between classical Antiquity and Mediaeval renewal. In this context, the ERC-funded PALAI project is on a quest to unlock these secrets using powerful imaging techniques and AI. By combining multispectral scans with machine learning, PALAI will reveal the erased writings faster and more clearly than ever before. This work promises not only to resurrect forgotten texts, but to rewrite our understanding of how scribes shaped knowledge.
Objective
PALAI will study palimpsests using advanced imaging and artificial intelligence. Palimpsests, or recycled manuscripts, especially those from Northern Italy in the early Middle Ages, are known as a treasure trove of lost texts. The reuse of ancient manuscripts shaped the scene upon which the Carolingian renaissance emerged, and is thus a missing link between classical Antiquity and the first period of major cultural renewal in the Middle Ages throughout the West. PALAI proposes to investigate where the recycled manuscripts came from, how they were selected and prepared for reuse, and what their reuse tells us about scribal communities’ worldviews. Doing so requires multispectral and XRF imaging, to recover the erased features of the original manuscripts. A major issue with such imaging is the post-capture data processing, which is both excessively time-consuming and often fails to extract the relevant data for scholars to examine: crucially, PALAI proposes the first large-scale exploration of machine learning models in order to solve this image processing bottleneck issue, which will have numerous applications to erased or damaged documents from other areas and periods. Using these technologies, PALAI will track the production of palimpsests in Northern Italy from the late 6th to the early 9th century, by investigating, on the level of individual manuscripts, the cultural entities that fostered it; it will analyze scribes’ and readers’ intellectual practices, their relation to past cultures, to their present environment, and to innovation and creation for the future; and it will put forward in narrative form a multicausal theory of manuscript reuse bringing to light an ecology of writing in which long-term sustainability of texts was paramount. PALAI’s methodology is designed to combine approaches that are traditionally compartmentalized, such as manuscript studies, close reading and history, in order to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history ancient history
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
75794 Paris
France
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