Our project focuses on the analysis and cataloguing of late medieval castle inventories from historic Tyrol, which are held at the Tyrolean Provincial Archives. These inventories were usually drawn up at the time of administrative changes or changes in ownership, and provide detailed information on the use of space, the positioning of objects and changes over time within the castles.

The inventories were compiled between 1320 and 1600 and are particularly valuable as they provide a detailed, room-by-room list of the objects contained therein. The project comprises 237 inventories from this period. We are building on the work of Oswald von Zingerle from 1909, who produced an important edition of medieval inventories; however, this was limited to the 15th century and comprised 82 inventories. By extending our period of investigation to the 14th to 16th centuries, we can explore the development of inventory-taking practices and the layout of castles during this transitional period. Through this, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of castles as social spaces. Of particular interest is the glossary of terms and objects compiled by Zingerle, which helps us to better understand the terminology used in the inventories.

We use digital text-mining methods to analyse the archival records. In doing so, we rely on semantic data modelling and various software tools to fully index the information in the inventories and to visualise the relationships between spaces, objects and people. By analysing 162 representative inventories, we hope to gain deeper insights into the historical practice of inventorying and the significance of castles as social spaces.