“Thinking about tools between archival science and history”. For a stratigraphical study of the structure of some relevant archives in Veneto, Trentino and Südtirol (14th-18th centuries)

Abstract

Nowadays, new technologies make it possible to restart the debate about the interpretation of the archival heritage on a deeper level than that outlined in the Guida generale degli archivi di Stato italiani. The debate should be taken up not only with regard to some aspects related to the preservation of archives, but rather for historical and archival-historical purposes. In fact, new technologies make it possible to conceive an effective rendering – on a ‘graphic’ and structural level, but also on a deeper conceptual level – of archival history research aimed at reconstructing the contexts in which the archives still available today have developed, making it possible to re-propose both the ‘production’ and ‘preservation’ phases and the subsequent ‘tradition’ phase, with particular reference to those passages that from the end of the Ancient Regime have brought them down to us and have handed them down to us. The recent study of the vicissitudes of some important archives in Veneto, Trentino and Südtirol areas makes it possible to read their structure stratigraphically and to reconstruct ‘virtually’ their order in different periods.