DOCUMENTS OF EARLY
(DEEDS PROJECT)
Directed by
Michael Gervers, PhD
For several decades, the DEEDS Project has had as its major research objective the development of a computer program to provide chronological context for undated English private charters issued after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and before the reign of Edward II in 1307. During this period, approximately 95% of these documents were promulgated without dates. Only after the start of the 14th century was internal dating regularly applied to conveyances. The program which has been developed, and is now available on line, produces a date based on the comparison of word-strings in the test document with similar word-strings in a database of 10,000 dated charters.
We would like to invite you to test this program
using Latin
texts from the period. You will find the site at:
http://scriptor.deeds.utoronto.ca:7777/d_mech
Once at the home page, click on "Go" at the bottom centre. Paste your
document to be dated in the empty rectangle and click on "next". If
you wish, edit your text. This entails exchanging personal or place
name with
the letter "P" (& note also what appears under "DOCUM"
on the home page). Continue to click "next" and finally "Date
it". The result will appear in Roman numerals in the upper left of
your screen, and in Arabic numerals at the lower right.
Generally speaking, these machine-generated dates provide accuracy within ± 10 years about 65% of the time. To bring the remaining 35% in line, we will need to develop additional algorithms.
The statistical background for the program was developed by Professor
Andrey
Feuerverger of the Department of Statistics, and his PhD student,
Gelila
Tilahun. The dating program, and the website, were created by Rodolfo
Fiallos
of the DEEDS Project.
Based on tests using the dated documents in the
DEEDS
corpus, the program can provide reasonable accuracy from about 1160;
before
that time there are very few dated documents available to serve as
comparative
material. We are always looking for documents to add to the database,
especially for the period 1066 to 1200, and would welcome examples from
sources
other than those we have already searched (about
190 printed sources up to this point). In fact, our efforts would
benefit
greatly from the collaboration of interested colleagues, both in
providing us
with the texts of transcribed documents on the one hand, and in testing
the
dating program with them on the other.
We also have a search engine which provides access to the content of
the 10,000
documents in the manner of a concordance. By this means, the database
is fully
searchable, and each column can be arranged in alphabetical or numeric
order by
clicking at the top of the column:
http://res.deeds.utoronto.ca:49838/research/
Click on Medieval Latin Charters >
Place
This is a beta program. We have worked long and hard to develop it, while at the same time knowing that there is always room for greater accuracy and improvement. We hope you will find it useful and that you will send us your reactions.
Michael Gervers
Rodolfo Fiallos
-- Rodolfo Fiallos Research Network/Database Administrator The DEEDS Project, University of Toronto www.utoronto.ca/deeds Tel./Fax: 416-978-4882