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Title: Digitalizing the Middle Ages

Digitalizing the Middle Ages

Deep Mapping, Third Dimension and Data Mining

by Meritxell Simó (Volume editor) Adriana Camprubí (Volume editor) Xavier Costa-Badia (Volume editor)
©2026 Edited Collection XII, 344 Pages
History & Political Science
Open Access

Summary

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the fast-growing panorama that lies at the crossroads between Digital Humanities and Medieval Studies. Digital tools have become essential for research in the Humanities. The new technical landscape multiplies the options for research, knowledge transfer, and dissemination exponentially. In this context, Digitalizing the Middle Ages seeks to highlight the need for a debate on the opportunities but also the risks and challenges posed by the application of Digital Humanities to the study of the medieval world. It brings together cutting-edge technologies and long-established traditions resulting in a true kaleidoscopic perspective which enables the debate on issues that cannot be addressed without innovative holistic methodological approaches. In this sense, the publication will be articulated around the main areas in which Digital Humanities intervene in medieval studies such as Deep Mapping, Third Dimension, and Data Mining.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Table of Contents
  • Preface (Meritxell Simó, Adriana Camprubí and Xavier Costa-Badia)
  • Part I Deep Mapping
  • Opening Up New Lines of Research. The Spatial Turn and the Contribution of GIS to Medieval Landscape Studies (Marc Ferrer Fernández, Marta Sancho i Planas, Marçal Díaz Ros and Xavier Costa-Badia)
  • 1.1 Introduction
  • 1.2 Definition of a Theoretical Framework
  • 1.2.1 Theoretical Underpinnings
  • 1.2.2 From Theory to Practice: Visualizing the Three Spaces in Archaeological Research
  • 1.3 Methodology Applied to Historical Research
  • 1.3.1 Integrating Geographic Information Systems into Historical Research
  • 1.3.2 Methods of Geospatial Analysis for the Lived Space
  • 1.3.2.1 Voronoi Diagrams
  • 1.3.2.2 Site Catchment Analysis
  • 1.3.2.3 Least-Cost Path
  • 1.3.2.4 Visibility Analysis
  • 1.3.2.5 Beyond Geographic Information Systems
  • 1.4 Several Practical Examples in Research in History, Archaeology and Studies of the Medieval Landscape
  • 1.4.1 The Landscape Archaeology of the Baix Montseny, Sixth to Tenth Centuries
  • 1.4.2 The Experience of the Settlement of El Penedès between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries: Limits and Possibilities
  • 1.4.3 From Resource Catchment Areas to the Definition of Areas of Influence: Aid and Supply in the High Middle Ages
  • 1.4.4 The Evolution of the Population between Late Antiquity and the Late Middle Ages in the Territory of the Orígens UNESCO Global Geopark, a Project Currently Underway
  • 1.5 Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Semantic Data Modeling and Beyond: Some Examples of Data Capture and Exploitation through Deep Mapping and Social Network Analysis (Esther Travé Allepuz, Pablo del Fresno Bernal, Sonia Medina Gordo and Alfred Mauri Martí)
  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 Background, Theoretical Framework and Literature Review
  • 2.3 Semantic Data Modeling for Integrated History: Written, Graphic, Material Data and Clustering
  • 2.4 Querying the SDM (I): Deep Mapping through Category–Attribute Relationship
  • 2.5 Querying the SDM (II): Social Network Analysis
  • 2.6 Discussion: Bias Detection, Relational History and Past Construction
  • 2.7 Some Concluding Remarks and Future Prospective
  • Bibliography
  • Data Feminism, Network Analysis and the Pre-Modern Archive (Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Ruth Ahnert)
  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 From Sources to Data: Challenging the Archive
  • 3.2.1 Hand-Curated Datasets: Languedocian Inquisition Records and English Protestant Letters
  • 3.2.2 Extracted Data: Tudor State Papers
  • 3.3 Listening to Silence: The Network Approach
  • 3.3.1 Nuancing Centralities: Women in Inquisition Records
  • 3.3.2 Triads of Power: Women in the Tudor State Papers
  • 3.4 By Way of Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Part II Third Dimension
  • Digitalizing the Architectural Heritage for the Study, Dissemination and Preservation of the Franciscan Observant Landscapes (Stefano Bertocci, Maria Soler Sala and Federico Cioli)
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 The F-ATLAS Project
  • 4.3 Digitalizing the Architectural Heritage
  • 4.3.1 Methodology and Techniques
  • 4.3.2 Implementation in the F-ATLAS Project
  • 4.3.2.1 Laser-Scanner Survey
  • 4.3.2.2 SfM Photogrammetry
  • 4.3.2.3 Future Developments
  • 4.4 Digitalizing the Monastic Landscapes
  • 4.4.1 Digital Network of Conventual Buildings
  • 4.4.2 Methodology and Techniques
  • 4.4.2.1 Relational and Multi-User Database
  • 4.4.2.2 Geospatial Data Server and Map Viewer
  • 4.4.3 Social Transfer and Dissemination Tools
  • 4.4.3.1 F-ATLAS WebMap
  • 4.4.3.2 F-ATLAS Virtual Museum
  • 4.5 Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Digital Models for Research, Study and Conservation of Medieval Architecture and Paintings (Carlos Andújar, Begoña Cayuela, Immaculada Lorés, Carles Mancho and Roser Piñol Bastidas)
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.1.1 Enhancement of Heritage Experiences: The Middle Ages. Digital Layered Models of Architecture and Mural Paintings over Time (EHEM)
  • 5.2 Art History Challenges
  • 5.2.1 The Original Monuments: Some Hypotheses
  • 5.2.1.1 The Architecture
  • 5.2.1.2 The Original Colors
  • 5.2.1.3 The Original Lighting
  • 5.2.2 The Data Structure
  • 5.2.3 Interactive Stories
  • 5.3 Technical Challenges
  • 5.3.1 Digitization
  • 5.3.2 Digital Reintegration of Fragmented Paintings
  • 5.3.3 Color Restitution
  • 5.3.4 Enriching the Models
  • 5.3.5 Digital Storytelling
  • 5.3.6 Visualization
  • 5.4 Evaluation
  • 5.5 Conclusions and Future Work
  • 5.5.1 A Case Study: Sant Quirze de Pedret Becoming Digitally Colored
  • 5.5.1.1 Restoring Medieval Colors
  • 5.5.1.2 Color Selection: From Colors Made of Pigments to Digital Color Surrogates
  • 5.5.1.3 The Dark Green Color of the Background as an Example
  • 5.5.1.4 Some Concerns on Digital Color Representation
  • 5.5.1.5 Conclusions: Advantages and Problems
  • Bibliography
  • 3D Recording: A Game-Changer for Historical and Archaeological Interpretation? Application of Digital 3D Tools in the Medieval Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Barcelona (LAMUB) (Sabina Batlle-Baró, Jordi Vallverdú Pastó, Bet Mallofré-López and Walter Alegría Tejedor)
  • 6.1 Introduction
  • 6.1.1 Visual Recording in Archaeology
  • 6.1.2 The Implications of Digital 3D Recording in Archaeology
  • 6.2 Objectives
  • 6.3 The Digital Record at the Castellvell Site
  • 6.3.1 Managing Legacy Data and Integration into the Record
  • 6.3.2 Interventions and Recording
  • 6.3.3 Teaching and Training for Students
  • 6.3.4 Publication and Communication of Archaeological Findings
  • 6.4 Virtualization and Dissemination of 3D Models: The Virtual Artifacts Library
  • 6.5 Discussion
  • 6.5.1 Separation Between Recording and Interpretation
  • 6.5.2 Models as Duplicates of Reality
  • 6.5.3 Efficiency and Time
  • 6.5.4 Training and Learning in Archaeology
  • 6.5.5 Communication and Dissemination
  • 6.5.6 Management and Preservation of Archaeological Data
  • 6.6 Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Part III Data Mining
  • Medieval Art Historians and Databases: A Paradoxical Relationship (Begoña Cayuela)
  • 7.1 Introduction
  • 7.2 From the Artwork to the Document
  • 7.3 Jeroni Martorell and the Iconographic Repertoire of Spain
  • 7.4 The Index of Christian Art
  • 7.5 The Mnemosyne Atlas
  • 7.6 From the Work of Art to the Image
  • 7.7 The Contribution of Medieval Art History
  • 7.8 The Irruption of Computer Databases
  • 7.9 Database as a Metaphor
  • 7.10 The Reception of Databases in the Art History Field
  • 7.11 From Images to Digital Images
  • 7.12 Indexing Iconography
  • 7.13 Indexing Digital Images
  • 7.14 From Digital Images to Databases
  • 7.15 Data Modeling
  • 7.16 Iconography Databases for Research Purposes
  • 7.17 Caveats and Limitations
  • Bibliography
  • Medieval Lyric at the Crossroads of Digital Philology (Meritxell Simó, Adriana Camprubí, Víctor Millet, Lorena Pérez Ben, Sadurní Martí and Miriam Cabré)
  • 8.1 Introduction
  • 8.2 Digital Editions and Medieval Lyric: A Perfect Marriage
  • 8.2.1 Toward a Standard for the Visualization of DSE
  • 8.2.2 DSE of the Female-Voiced Medieval Lyric (DigiLiriTrob): a Case Study
  • 8.3 The Challenge of Variation
  • 8.4 Databases and Philology
  • 8.4.1 Describing the Catalan Poetic Tradition: Cançoners DB
  • Bibliography
  • The Application of Handwritten Text Recognition Systems to Medieval and Early Modern Notarial Registers: Potentials and Risks (Vera Isabell Schwarz-Ricci)
  • 9.1 Marino Mauriello: A Beneventan Renaissance Notary and His Registers
  • 9.2 Ground-Truthing the Registers
  • 9.3 HTR Workflow and the Platform Transkribus
  • 9.4 Transkribus: HTR+ and Pylaia
  • 9.5 eScriptorium and Mask Recognition
  • 9.6 Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Digitizing the Catalan Middle Ages: The Digital GMLC and the CODOLCAT as Means of Updating Medieval Latin Lexicography (Anahí Álvarez Aguado, Catalina Monserrat Roig and Carlos Prieto Espinosa)
  • 10.1 From the Handcrafted to the Digital Dictionary: the Journey of the Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis Cataloniae
  • 10.2 The Corpus Documentale Latinum Cataloniae: An Edition of Editions of High-Medieval Documentation from Catalonia
  • 10.3 Progress and Developments in the Digital GMLC
  • 10.4 The Integration of the Digitized Textual Corpus and the Electronic Dictionary
  • 10.5 Digitizing Medieval Hispanic Latinity: The Corpus Documentale Latinum Hispaniarum
  • 10.6 Present and Near Future: Lexicographical and Technological Challenges
  • Bibliography

Preface

Meritxell Simó

Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals (IRCVM),
Universitat de Barcelona—Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC),
Orcid 0000-0002-9043-9134, msimotor@ub.edu

Adriana Camprubí

Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals (IRCVM),
Universitat de Barcelona—Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC),
Orcid 0000-0003-0212-371X, acamprubi@ub.edu

Xavier Costa-Badia

Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals (IRCVM),
Universitat de Barcelona, Orcid 0000-0003-2454-1584,
xaviercosta@ub.edu

As is well known, the encounter between the humanities and digital technologies has brought about a profound paradigm shift in scientific practice. The interferences between the experimental and humanistic sciences have revolutionized the very conception of knowledge. A key aspect of this transformation, often underscored in recent discussions, is its irreversible evolution into an essentially collaborative task—interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary in nature.

However, beyond the constraints imposed by the new digital context and the various redefinitions to which the term “humanities” is subjected in our era, marked by the hypertrophy of specialization, it is important to remember that interdisciplinarity has been inherent to humanistic studies since their inception. As early as Cicero’s time, the term humanitas referred to a broad set of interrelated forms of knowledge and disciplines encompassing all the potentialities of human culture. It was only at the dawn of modernity that the division between sciences and humanities emerged—a division that, curiously, remains in force today, in the age of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, and still divides the educational pathways of our high school students.

The cross-pollination of knowledge and disciplines that the digital world appears to have recently encouraged is, in fact, a familiar and well-trodden ground for medievalists—and, in a sense, is consonant with the nature of our object of study. It is needless to recall that medieval science, solidly structured around the trivium and quadrivium, integrated all forms of knowledge and disciplines in a transversal manner, to the point that the arts of language served as a preparatory foundation for the study of mathematics.

The interdisciplinary vocation of medieval studies is not, however, a vestige of old scholasticism, but rather a pressing necessity arising from the deep temporal gap that separates us from our subject matter and the complexity this distance entails. A researcher may find themselves, to give just one example, confronted with a song by an Italian troubadour educated in Latin, who writes in Occitan due to genre conventions. The song survives in several manuscript witnesses, each with textual variations, which cannot be properly interpreted without solid philological and palaeographical expertise. The meaning of the text is further enriched by miniatures that employ a specific iconographic code.

Moreover, a proper understanding of the text demands not only the conceptual reconstruction of a system of thought that is no longer our own, but also the material reconstruction of the physical space in which the song was performed. Only through such archaeological reconstruction of material objects and spatial organization can we begin to understand the social structures and environments in which the troubadours lived and acted.

The founding of the IRCVM (Research Institute on Medieval Cultures) at the University of Barcelona in 2008 responds to a collaborative imperative aimed at advancing medieval studies to the highest standards of excellence, fostering synergies among historians, philosophers, archaeologists, philologists, musicologists, art historians and others. In recent years, however, beyond interdisciplinarity, the growing integration of digital tools into the work of various research teams has profoundly shaped both the daily practice of research and the opportunities for disseminating its results.

The volume aims to offer a panoramic overview of the various intersections between Digital Humanities and Medieval Studies, highlighting not only the many opportunities afforded by the incorporation of new analytical techniques into the field of medievalism, but also the risks and challenges they entail. From this perspective, the volume is structured around three key axes of the digital turn as applied to Medieval Studies: Deep Mapping, Third Dimension and Data Mining.

The first part opens with a reflection on the so-called Spatial Turn, which has renewed scholarly interest in territory as the physical basis of historical processes, and in landscape as a complex geosystem shaped by the dynamic interaction of natural, social and cultural elements. This approach is developed explicitly in Chapter 1, “Opening Up New Lines of Research. The Spatial Turn and the Contribution of GIS to Medieval Landscape Studies,” which provides a theoretical framework for the integration of spatial dimensions into archaeological research and, through a series of case studies, demonstrates how GIS tools can be used to effectively analyze and reconstruct complex medieval landscapes. Chapter 2, “Semantic Data Modeling and Beyond: Some Examples of Data Capture and Exploitation through Deep Mapping and Social Network Analysis,” offers a methodological reflection on the use of Semantic Data Modeling as a strategy for integrating diverse sources, enabling spatial analyses and network visualizations with strong visual components. The part concludes with Chapter 3, “Data Feminism, Network Analysis and the Pre-Modern Archive,” which, from a critical gender perspective, explores how network analysis—conceived also as a form of mapping—can help bring to light female and marginalized voices long silenced by archival biases.

The potential of Third Dimension (3D) technologies for representing historical objects and spaces through interactive three-dimensional models enables the reconstruction of environments not only for dissemination purposes but also for documentation and heritage preservation. This is the focus of the second part of the volume, which begins with Chapter 4, “Digitalizing the Architectural Heritage for the Study, Dissemination and Preservation of the Franciscan Observant Landscapes,” presenting a practical case—F-ATLAS—for the documentation and preservation of the architectural heritage of the Observant Franciscan convents. Chapter 5, “Digital Models for Research, Study, and Conservation of Medieval Architecture and Paintings,” centers on digital solutions for the conservation and study of Romanesque mural painting. The part concludes with Chapter 6, “3D Recording: A Game-Changer for Historical and Archaeological Interpretation? Application of Digital 3D Tools in the Medieval Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Barcelona (LAMUB),” which examines both the potential and limitations of virtual tools in archaeological recording and research processes.

The work of researchers—traditionally confined to a limited corpus of written documents and to the scope of individual inquiry—has been fundamentally transformed by techniques such as automated text reading and advanced tagging systems derived from data science. These allow us to process vast amounts of information and extract insights that traditional methods could have never achieved. This is the focus of the third and final part of the volume, beginning with Chapter 7, “Medieval Art Historians and Databases: A Paradoxical Relationship,” which reflects on the use of databases in the study of medieval art. Chapter 8, “Medieval Lyric at the Crossroads of Digital Philology,” explores the impact of computational text analysis on the study of medieval lyric poetry, with special attention to digital editing in XML-TEI and the use of databases. The rise of OCR technologies and their potential for the automatic transcription of historical sources is the focus of Chapter 9, “The Application of Handwritten Text Recognition Systems to Medieval and Early Modern Notarial Registers: Potentials and Risks.” The part concludes with Chapter 10, “Digitizing the Catalan Middle Ages: The Digital GMLC and the CODOLCAT as Means of Updating Medieval Latin Lexicography,” presenting two innovative Latin lexicography projects.

The landscape we have just sketched vastly expands the possibilities for interconnecting different knowledges and integrating them into the holistic vision that remains the ultimate purpose of the humanities—and of medieval studies in particular—which, as already noted, tend to conceive science as a universe at once profoundly unified and deeply diverse. However, whereas the medieval world was a finite cosmos, divinely designed and scaled to be readable by humankind, the contemporary universe is not only lacking a didactic architect but is also fundamentally immeasurable. In the context of the Digital Humanities, the intellectual vertigo provoked by the proliferation of data is but one of many risks posed by a revolution that is, in some respects, more epistemological than technical. This perhaps self-evident observation underscores the extent to which all the opportunities opened up by the digital paradigm are inseparably bound to equally significant challenges—ones that clearly signal to researchers the urgent need to confront the epistemological upheaval triggered by the technological revolution.

These and other issues were at the heart of the IRCVM’s second international conference. Under the title Digitalizing the Middle Ages, we sought to open a dialogue between the academia and broader society, building a space for critical debate around Digital Humanities as applied to the study of the medieval world—attentive to both the opportunities and the risks. We were, and remain, convinced that refining our tools for heritage conservation only makes sense if those tools also help us grasp the value of that legacy and, in turn, enable us to engage with the present through a critical lens. The conference, which was exceptionally well received and brought together medievalists from around the globe, served as the starting point for the reflection that, a few years later, culminates in the volume we now present.

Opening Up New Lines of Research. The Spatial Turn and the Contribution of GIS to Medieval Landscape Studies

Marc Ferrer Fernández

Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals (IRCVM),
Universitat de Barcelona, Orcid 0000-0003-1655-9741, marcferrer@ub.edu

Marta Sancho i Planas

Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals (IRCVM),
Universitat de Barcelona, Orcid 0000-0002-6916-5220, msancho@ub.edu

Marçal Díaz Ros

Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals (IRCVM),
Universitat de Barcelona, Orcid 0000-0003-1335-3238, mdiazros@gmail.com

Details

Pages
XII, 344
Publication Year
2026
ISBN (PDF)
9783631915486
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631915493
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631915479
DOI
10.3726/b23035
Open Access
CC-BY
Language
English
Publication date
2026 (June)
Keywords
Digital Humanities Medieval Studies Deep Mapping Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Semantic Data Modelling Social Network Analysis Digital Heritage Third Dimension (3D) Photogrammetry Digital Philology Digital Scholarly Edition Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) Data Mining Historical Databases Lexicography
Published
Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2026. xii, 344 pp., 22 fig. col., 52 fig. b/w.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Meritxell Simó (Volume editor) Adriana Camprubí (Volume editor) Xavier Costa-Badia (Volume editor)

Meritxell Simó, Director of the Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures (2015-2025), she leads the Corpus des Troubadours (IECUAI) project and serves as Professor of Romance Philology at the University of Barcelona. Adriana Camprubí is an Associate Lecturer in Romance Philology at the University of Barcelona. She holds a PhD in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature. Xavier Costa-Badia is a Serra Húnter Tenure-Eligible Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Barcelona. He holds a BA in History as well as an MA and PhD in Medieval Cultures from the same institution.

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Title: Digitalizing the Middle Ages