Archives, documents, and proof: Diplomatics, the ius archivi and state practice in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (updated title) Randolph C. Head UC-Riverside “Things: Material Cultures of the Long Eighteenth Century” University of California-Cambridge University-Huntington Library Interdisciplinary Workshop April 2012 My contribution to ‘Things’ consisted of a discussion of two incommensurate responses to the crisis of documentary authority that spread across France and Germany (at least) in the seventeenth century. The text here is a modestly abridged version of Chapter 7 of my current book project on the history of European political archives and their organization from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. This text has been substantially revised and corrected – but also substantially shortened – for publication in the Historical Journal (forthcoming 2013). I post it here to indicate the broader context of the published version, but request that this version not be cited, owing to some uncorrected translations and other elements! I left the piece in ‘chapter’ form and included my discussion of Daniel Papenbroeck and Jean Mabillon, and the emergence of early diplomatics in Belgium and France, since these represent the complementary opposite of the German ius archivi thinkers that I proposed as my original topic.