Seeing the invisible: Computer science for codicology

Computer science exhibits very rapid development, and when coupled with interdisciplinarity, it can bring considerable benefit to other fields of study. We present a particular example in watermark location and identification. Computation in this area of work is not new, but we show that digitally native acquisition and model-based inspection permit new results to be drawn from documents examined by hand some decades ago. Some ideas we present are generalisable to other aspects of the archaeology of paper manufacture, while others extend to humanities research more broadly. Our conclusion is that the merits of dialogue between scholars of the humanities and computer scientists will grow significantly over time. Such dialogue between communities is often impeded by an absence of common language, and the real problem may be the development of suitable hybrid scholars.