‘We have been part of a trend, rather than starting one’: thus the editors of this timely collection of papers on the study of early medieval diplomatic, that is, of charters, their production, copying, survival, preservation, use and re-use. In an excellent introduction, Jarrett writes of having survived postmodernism. Maybe linguistic and deconstructive turns of millstones make for a finer-ground appreciation of what charters were made for and how they worked. Jarrett recognises the distinctive traditions of diplomatic in the various countries of Europe, and the international collaboration that has characterised the field since the Second World War. Jarrett pleasingly notes the role of British scholars here, collectively in the ‘Bucknell Group’, and individually as in Wendy Davies's path-breaking paper on the Latin charter-tradition, and more recently her collaborative work with German, Austrian and Spanish as well as UK colleagues. The study of early medieval charters is indeed a European project – which Japanese and North American scholars have enthusiastically joined. Contributors to this book discuss material ranging geographically from Sweden to Italy. The tendency of collections of this sort is to unevenness. Here, though, all the authors push at conceptual and interpretative frontiers. Jarrett's paper on Catalan charters is framed, and executed, particularly well. As a Carolingianist I have particularly relished the contributions of Charles West, counter-intuitively incisive on a late ninth-century lay scribe in Burgundy, Antonio Sennis on eighth-century Italians using documents not to but by destruction, Shigeto Kikuchi's luminous account of Carolingian rulers’ titles as used in charters, and Elina Screen's decoding of Lothar i's ‘political creativity’ in Italy as evidenced in charters of the 830s. Microhistories are among the offspring of charter-studies, and Allan Scott McKinley deftly reconstructs family strategies in eighth-century Alsace from the charters of Wissembourg (though his invention of ‘the bald family’ [sic] should have been editorially revised). Of special methodological interest is Julie Hofmann's discriminating account of the advantages and snags of a database in the study of female donors to the Carolingian monastery of Fulda: her conclusion that ‘problems are the makings of new possibilities’ is surely correct. In connecting charters with changed political culture in Sweden's ‘medieval’ twelfth century, Erik Niblaeus likewise turns complications into intellectual opportunities, leading readers into a much wider comparative field of non-imperial expansionism where every Weg might be seen as a Sonderweg. Arkady Hodge essays coverage of the whole early medieval period from the fifth century to the twelfth, and from Ireland to Byzantium, evoking an ‘international mainstream’ and asking thought-provoking questions about definitions and ‘standard types' of charters. Charles Insley, framing masterly analysis in European context, shows how the Exeter archive was used in attempts to fashion a past for a new see. Of the remaining three contributions, on Anglo-Saxon charters, of Martin Ryan, Morn Capper and Alaric Trousdale, each is fine in itself; but in the spirit of the foregoing comments, I would have wished bibliographical references less resolutely insular. That quibble apart, Problems and possibilities deserves the warmest of welcomes.