A Tale of Twelve Thousand Cards: Stamp Seals’ Scholarship History with Social-Material Lenses

Klein Cardoso, Silas (2023). A Tale of Twelve Thousand Cards: Stamp Seals’ Scholarship History with Social-Material Lenses. Near Eastern archaeology, 86(4), pp. 266-273. University of Chicago Press https://doi.org/10.1086/727581

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The article discusses the cognitive influence of cataloging tools in the stamp seals research project carried out between 1981–2013 at the Department of Biblical Studies of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. As visual knowledge tools, the c.12000 index cards used by the so-called “Fribourg School” helped to analyze, translate, and decompose visual artifacts into historical/archaeological data in the form of textual descriptions. In terms of media theory, the process entails the translation of structural (from non-linear to linear), cognitive (from synthetical to consecutive), and syntactical (from dense to non-dense) features. The semiotic analysis of the cards seen against the group’s social-academic context shows that the cards were not only central methodologically but supported the group’s conceptual and methodological transition with direct outcomes in their historiography. The case study thus addresses an important issue in and for Digital Humanities, namely the conceptual role of knowledge tools in scholarship interpreting the past.

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