Abstract: This article reports the findings of a recent interdisciplinary project to extract and analyze the genetic information contained in parchment manuscripts. We discuss the genetic analysis of ninety-one parchment manuscripts held by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Manuscripts tested ranged in date from the eighth through the twentieth centuries and originated in a wide geographical area spanning England, much of Europe, the Middle East, and northeast Africa. The article comprises an overview of the project and its aims, a description of methods and outcomes, and a discussion of the implications and promises of such research for a variety of humanistic and scientific fields.
Stinson et al. (Sun,) studied this question.