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Ancient Wisdom Online: Towards a digital library of Ancient Greek and Roman

Inscriptions in Cyprus

The Cyprus Institute – STARC

Topic overview and research aim What are the inscriptions?

• A direct evidence of past activities, ideas, events as narrated for posterity by past people.

• A valuable link between history and archaeology, archaeology and social sciences, history and geology, gender studies and sociology, philosophy of religion or history of sciences.

• Can be investigated by complementary disciplines:

Archaeology

Geology

Philology

Conservation

Musealization

Topic overview and research aimHistory of research on inscriptions in digital era

• Enhancement of the access to information and development in creating online accessible repositories regarding ancient inscriptions

• Several projects on digital epigraphy• TEI for Epigraphy (EpiDoc) has been the major starting point towards

the standardization of electronic publication of Greek and Latin inscriptions (applied by various digital epigraphy projects).

• Development of various tools to advance the study and research of inscriptions online: terminologies, vocabulary and thesauri, ontologies

Topic overview and research aimThe research aim

• An on-going research on the development of a cross-disciplinary metadata for Ancient Inscriptions integrating information regarding the objects themselves and their digital “representations” (3D models, photographic documentation, digital texts, transliterations, etc.)

• Development of the research within the framework of EAGLE

Archaeia Kypriaki Gramateia The Ancient Cypriot Secretariat Corpus Initiative

Epigram from Palaipafos, Kouklia, Cyprus

Epigram from Marion, Museum of Polis Chrysochous, Paphos, Cyprus

Epigram from Salamina, Museum of Famagusta,

Cyprus

Epigram from Kition, Museum Pieridi, Larnaka, Cyprus

• A first assessment of what is available in the field of digital epigraphy and in the community of Digital Humanities

• Survey and analysis of the formal descriptions of inscriptions used in various digital epigraphy repositories:

• Few digital archives use standardized domain related metadata schema (e.g. TEI EpiDoc)

• Some describe their data using simplified and generic cross-domain standardized metadata (e.g. Dublin Core)

• Very few use CIDOC-CRM (or any other reference model)• The majority publish their data online through proprietary schemas

that are only constituted of limited fields

A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions

State of the art and assessment

A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions

State of the art and assessment • Comparisons of the different schemas or structures used by

different institutions• A first mapping of the metadata fields to identify the common

ones within the various digital inscription initiatives

As a general rule, in all examined cases the description of the corresponding digital surrogates (of the original inscriptions) is missing.

• Based on previous research in STARC, our metadata takes into consideration LIDO and CARARE metadata schemas and have at its base CIDOC-CRM as a reference model (it keeps into consideration EpiDoc since it is the most used by the epigraphy community)

• The metadata schema for ancient Cypriot Inscriptions has various goals and aims:

• to describe in detail the “digital surrogate”, its provenance and its relations with the original

• to provide related information about the context (ancient and modern) of the inscription

• to enable a harvesting to larger initiatives, such as Europeana, or future research infrastructures (e.g. ARIADNE, DARIAH)

A cross-disciplinary metadata for Cypriot Inscriptions The metadata for Cypriot inscriptions

• The Metadata schema derives its concepts from a multidisciplinary environment and reflects related research in each.

• It is organized in:• groups corresponding to various research domains tangent to the

topic• wrappers • sub-wrappers• flags


Funerary inscription from Politiko. AKG, vol. 2, E21

Metadata sub-set describing the support of the inscription


Funerary inscription from Politiko. AKG, vol. 2, E21 Metadata sub-set about the text

of the inscription


IMAGE

3D

Epigraph by Decius Marius Venantius Basilius, Colosseum, Rome

Epigram from Salamina, Museum of Famagusta, Cyprus



Implications for research infrastructures

• A multi-disciplinary metadata descriptive content, coupled with data organised according to a conceptual reference model (e.g. CIDOC-CRM) has several benefits:

• it better and more accurately reflects the nature of past artefacts and better represents their multi-layered nature

• it helps gaining new insights embedded in such objects and enhances the transparency of their interpretation

• It enhances the integration of the repository into a wider perspective and enables its incorporation in global research infrastructures to be developed in the future (for example ARIADNE, a new EU funded project aimed at developing a digital infrastructure for archaeological research)

Implications for Europeana

•Implications for Europeana:

• CyI, providing Europeana with the metadata of the Cypriot Inscription corpus, will enable a wider visibility and awareness to the AKGDC Project.

• The publication into Europeana will present to the general public a type of subject usually addressed to small communities.

• Europeana will be enriched with a critical mass of quality-oriented content.

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Thank you for your attention!

[email protected]@cyi.ac.cy

[email protected]@cyi.ac.cy

[email protected]

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I1 sorin hermon_ancient_wisdom