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Contents

1. I The Hand Repeated: Script Corpora and the Limits of Handwriting Attribution Margit Lange · Anneke de Vries · Forensic document examination pp. 1–24 +

   Attribution of questioned handwriting increasingly rests on comparison against large digitised script corpora. This article examines three attribution exercises in which corpus-based likelihood ratios and expert judgement diverged, and asks what the corpus can and cannot warrant. We argue that corpus evidence constrains, but does not replace, the examiner’s account of a hand’s habitual movement.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 1–24

2. II Inventing the Ancestor: Fabricated Genealogies and the Uses of Descent Tomás Ferreira · Historiography pp. 25–41 +

   A forged descent is rarely a lie about one family alone. Drawing on fourteen genealogical fabrications compiled between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article sets out what such documents were for, who accepted them, and how the claim survived long after the parchment was doubted.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 25–41

3. III Ageing the Page: Simulated Wear in Twentieth-Century Manuscript Forgeries Caterina Rossi · Codicology pp. 42–63 +

   Examination reports from the last four decades record more than sixty attempts to make new paper read as old: staining, controlled foxing, artificial worm damage, and mechanical wear at the fold. Surveyed together, they show which signs of age forgers imitate first, and which they consistently neglect.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 42–63

4. IV Paper, Watermark, Date: Three Case Studies from the Rotterdam Trial Elias Brumberg · Archival studies pp. 64–79 +

   The Rotterdam forgery trial (1998–2003) placed paper evidence before a criminal court for the first time in a Dutch documentary prosecution. This article reconstructs the watermark testimony from the trial record and follows each of the three documents into the later technical literature, where two of the datings have quietly changed.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 64–79

5. V After the Laboratory: Technical Reports in Historical Argument Adaeze Obi · Method pp. 80–97 +

   Laboratory reports enter historical argument as facts, but they arrive shaped by the questions they were asked. Proposing a protocol for citing technical findings, this article treats the report as a genre with conventions, limits, and a rhetoric of its own.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 80–97

6. VI Counterfeit Seals in Late Joseon Administrative Documents Hyun-ju Park · Archival studies pp. 98–116 +

   Official seals certified the authenticity of Joseon administrative documents, and their counterfeiting was a capital crime. Reading legal case records alongside surviving forgeries, this article traces how seal verification was practised, taught, and occasionally defeated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 98–116

7. VII The Diaries Everyone Wanted: Expertise and Consent in a Documentary Hoax Wenqing Zhao · History of forgery pp. 117–130 +

   Large documentary hoaxes are usually explained by the skill of the forger. This article reverses the account, reading the press files of a twentieth-century case to show how editors, authenticators, and buyers each narrowed their own question until no one held the one that would have exposed it.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 117–130

8. — A Register of Interpolated Charters in Dutch Municipal Archives Compiled by the Society’s Working Group on Diplomatics · Notes & documents pp. 131–136 +

   The first instalment of a running register: sixty-three charters carrying later interpolations, with repository, hand, and the earliest record of each doubt. Corrections and additions are invited and will be acknowledged in the next instalment.

   IJFS III.1 (Autumn 2026): pp. 131–136

End of contents · Vol. III, No. 1 · pp. 1–136 · Leiden, Autumn 2026