Records out and archives in: early modern cities as creators of records and as communities of archives
Cities in Italy, Germany and England experienced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a scriptural revolution. The city registers served the functional and archival memories of the city and its citizens. The creation, storage and use of records were social and cultural practices, embedded in and constituting communities of memory. The records were re-organized and re-used, repositioning the text in timespace within different communicational spectra. Records created and maintained by cities in early modern history were archives, the city archives were records.
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