When studying wooden slips from archaeological excavations, the first undertaking is the interpretation of characters, and then comes the restoration of the slips themselves. Only on this basis can we further conduct research on institutions and past societies. This project commenced in 2021, aiming to explore the possibilities of making further breakthroughs in the current rich landscape of humanities research by using digital humanities tools to assist in two essential tasks in wooden slip studies – character interpretation and restoration of wooden slips.  

In the first year, the scope of the project was an examination of the Han Wooden Slips housed at the Institute of History and Philology (IHP) at Academia Sinica to better understand each step of how traditional researchers interpret and restore wooden slips. With the support of the Wooden Slips Character Dictionary: The Database of Han Dynasty Wooden Slips from Edsen-Gol, IHP developed under this project in collaboration with the Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures, the Text Model developed by the Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures, and the text comparison tools provided on the Digital Analysis System for Humanities, it is hoped that we can find possible interpretations that scholars or experts were unable to identify, and analyze and discover new relevance in wooden slips, further reassembling and restoring broken wooden slips. At the current phase, we have seen preliminary results.  

Based on the foundation of research and experience gained in the first year, the focus in the second year is to include Han wooden slips newly discovered from Northwest China in the tests of wooden slip restoration. The project uses text comparison tools on the Digital Analysis System for Humanities with a designated comparison method for identifying possibly related wooden slips, then follows manual interpretation and analysis. We expect the project will advance wooden slip restoration work and explore the accuracy of digital humanities tools. We will also continue to optimize the functions of the Wooden Slips Character Dictionary and add entries.