Digital Epigraphy Workshop

Public sessions: Monday-Tuesday, 29-30 April 2002 Davis Library 214 a,b,c, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Contact: Tom Elliott, Director, Ancient World Mapping Center, UNC-CH 919-962-0502 (tom_elliott@unc.edu)

The focus of the workshop is epigraphic study and publication in light of digital technologies and the Internet. Epigraphy is the academic investigation and dissemination of texts cut or incised into stone, metal, wood and other materials. It has a long and highly technical historiographic tradition in Western scholarship, stretching back to classical antiquity itself. The majority of such inscriptions studied today derive from ancient Greek and Roman civilization, but epigraphers also work with texts from a variety of other cultures in a range of languages and scripts.

The maturation of digital techniques that can be applied to the editing and dissemination of epigraphic texts, combined with ongoing change and uncertainty in academic discourse and academic publishing in the humanities, warrant regular examination and discussion to secure potential benefits for the field while avoiding pitfalls and duplication of effort. It is particularly important that epigraphers examine relevant work being done by humanists and scientists in other fields, so as to benefit from their innovations.

The goal of this workshop is to facilitate such candid discussion while assessing the current state of digital epigraphic efforts, particularly in North American institutions.

Summary Schedule

Monday, 29 April
Session I (9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.): Digital Epigraphies
- Opening Remarks (Tom Elliott & Charlotte Roueche')
- The Cornell Greek Epigraphy Project (Nancy Kelly and John Mansfield)
- Fits and Starts: Texts and Images at the U. S. Epigraphy Project (John Bodel)
- Script, Image and the Culture of Writing in the Ancient World (Charles Crowther)

Session II (10:10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.): Comparing Projects and Devising Standards - The Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri: DDBDP (John Oates)
- Representing Artifacts in the William Blake Archive (Joseph Viscomi)
- EpiDoc: Theory and Standards for Epigraphic Markup (Bodel/Elliott)
Session III (1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.): EpiDoc Enters Practice
- The Aphrodisias Inscriptions (Roueche')
- Why XML? (Charles Crowther, John Lavagnino and Harold Short)
- The Athenian Quota Lists in Epidoc (Neel Smith and Amanda Regan)

Collaborative Presentation IV (2:45 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.): EPAPP and EpiDoc
- Why digitize ALA (Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity)? (Roueche')
- EPAPP/EpiDoc on the Ground (Gabriel Bodard and Hugh Cayless)
- Building an EpiDoc Text (EPAPP Team)
- The EpiDocinator (Cayless and Noel Fiser)

Tuesday, 30 April
Session V (9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.): Technology, Trends and Context
- Creating and Preserving Digital Resources for Humanities
Scholars: Knowing the Virtual User (Helen Tibbo)
- Current Trends in Digital Library Research (Gary Marchionini)
- Considerations on Electronic Publication and Classics (Ross Scaife)