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ICS02: 9. Digital palaeography

simonastoyanova edited this page Mar 7, 2019 · 17 revisions

Sunoikisis Digital Classics, Spring 2019

Session 9. Digital methods in ancient palaeography

Thursday Mar 7, 16:00 UK = 18:00 EET

Convenors: Yasmine Amory (Ghent), Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello (Basel) & Simona Stoyanova (King's College London)

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/G-aVl7JZlGQ

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yQxSo8j89T7IaxK3ZdetM_z1AuqCOBDzJPlKak3X2vM/present

Session outline

This session will introduce the use and development of digital methods in the study of palaeography. We will start with a short background of the discipline and a walkthrough the various methodologies employed in the study of scripts and scribal hands. We will discuss the approaches taken by specific projects - Genizah, Archetype and D-Scribes - and how they vary depending on the documents’ physical characteristics, textual content, state of preservation and the projects’ research questions.

Seminar readings

Further reading

  • Ciula, A. 2005. "Digital paleography: using the digital representation of medieval script to support paleographic analysis." Digital Medievalist 1. Available: https://journal. digitalmedievalist.­org/­articles/10.16995/dm.4/print/
  • Reggiani, N. 2017. “Virtual Papyrology.” In Digital papyrology I: Methods, tools and trends. Berlin & New York. Pp. 151-160 (5.4: “Digital Palaeography”). Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547474-005
  • Rehbein, M. et al. 2009. Codicology & palaeography in the digital age. Norderstedt.
  • Stokes, PA 2017, "Scribal Attribution Across Multiple Scripts: A Digitally Aided Approach." SPECULUM 92, no. S1. Pp. S65-S85. Available: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/693968
  • Tarte, Ségolène, 2012. "Interpreting Textual Artefacts: Cognitive Insights into Expert Practices." Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2012. Available: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/openbook/chapter/dhc2012-tarte
  • Terras, M. 2006. Image to interpretation: an intelligent system to aid historians in reading the Vindolanda texts. Oxford. (especially pp.84ff, chapter 3)
  • Tracy, S.V., The Lettering of an Athenian Mason (Hesperia, Supplement XV.), Princeton, 1975
  • Grasby, R.D., Latin Inscriptions: Studies in Measurement and Making (Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 70 (2002), pp. 151-176)

Essay title

  • tba

Exercise

  1. Open MultiPal (http://multipal.fr/en), pick a language of your choice, and try to decipher the text from the image. Try to transcribe following the quick guide.
  2. Look at at least two of the following tools, and compare the interface, usability and pedagogical value with Multipal's approach. Think about the different languages involved, the amount of knowledge needed to participate, support given, etc. when comparing the different sites.
    1. Ancient Lives
    2. Scribes of the Cairo Geniza
    3. National Archives interactive tutorial
    4. Zenon Papyri tutorial
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