Form, Content, and Space: Methodological Challenges in the Study of Medieval and Early Modern European Graffiti

Abstract

Scholars of variousdisciplines have focused their attention on European Medieval and Early Modern graffitiduring the last decade, thus confirming and reinforcing the value of thispeculiar written evidence. Their contributions demonstrate that graffiti canoffer valuable information to different fields of study (e.g. shipbuilding,palaeography, history, social culture, and visual culture) through a glimpseinto past daily life. Due to their nature, graffiti present a completely freegraphic expression, which may appear in either textual or pictorial forms, orboth. This characteristic makes their study rather challenging due to the twodifferent mechanisms of communication they employ. In the case of textualgraffiti, the content is transmitted through linguistic codification, whilepictorial graffiti require a decoding process that is more complex andarticulated. The first challenge, though, is to find a way to record andcompare both evidence on the same graphic and verbal levels.  Furthermore, as for any other epigraphicevidence, the graffiti analysis must take into account the writing surfaces andthe context, two elements that are fundamental for the final interpretation ofthis source. This paper will address these methodological issues concerning thepreliminary phase of graffiti documentation and classification/cataloguing. Thestarting point has been the recent debate and application of FAIR dataprinciples in the field of Humanities, which aim to create quality data, easilyexchanged in a digital environment, fostering knowledge in the field. Sincethis approach has not yet been applied to graffiti studies, the paper aims tostimulate a dialogue on innovative and objective methodological approacheswithin the researchers’ community.