Current Epigraphy
ISSN: 1754-0909

Manuel Ramírez reports on the publication of Cultura Escrita & Sociedad vol. 9 2009, entitled Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica.

The following lecture (in New York) has just been announced:

Rediscovering the inscriptions of Campa (Vietnam)
Speaker: Arlo Griffiths
Location: 2nd Floor Lecture Room
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E 84th St
New York, NY
Date: Monday, March 8 2010
Time: 6:00 p.m.

The aim of this lecture is to inform the interested New York public on recent developments in the study of the written records of ancient ‘Indianized’ polities in Southeast Asia. We will take as example the epigraphic corpus of the ancient Campa kingdom(s), which lay in what is now central and southern Vietnam. The study of Campa epigraphy involves texts in Sanskrit and in the poorly known vernacular Old Cam language, which belongs to the Austronesian language family. This field of research once flourished in French colonial times, then all but died out after WW II, and has only recently been resuscitated from a coma that lasted for decades. Newly discovered inscriptions have started to be published again, and a census of Campa inscriptions was undertaken last September-October in museums and archaeological sites of Vietnam. The aim of the census was to up-date the general inventory of Campa inscriptions, whose last published installment dates to 1942, and to record essential data of previously known and newly discovered epigraphical documents. The presentation will discuss general aspects of Southeast Asian epigraphy, as well as specific aspects of the Campa corpus and the history of its study. Some new inscriptions, which throw interesting new light on the history of Campa and its place within the larger scale development of Southeast Asian history, will be selected for close inspection.

Arlo Griffiths holds a PhD in Sanskrit from Leiden University. After holding a position as lecturer in Indian Religions at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and holding the chair of Sanskrit at Leiden University, he joined the French School of Asian Studies (L’École française d’Extrême-Orient) in 2008 as Professor of Southeast Asian history. His main fields of interest are Hindu religious/ritual literature in Sanskrit, on the one hand, and inscriptions of Southeast Asia in Sanskrit and vernacular languages, on the other. His approach to the (ancient) history of Southeast Asia is primarily epigraphic, and he is currently involved in projects concerning the inscriptions of ancient Cambodia, ancient Indonesia, and Campa.

(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, January 28th, 2010. Brief report by Charlotte Tupman.)

The letter: a diplomatic history

Robin Osborne

Osborne began his paper by explaining that his main focus would be upon examining structural points in the genre of the letter. A letter is a composition of a very strong generic type: whatever the context of the letter, its writer is bound by conventions that lead to what is written being framed in a particular way, which in turn defines the relationship between the letter-writer and the recipient. Letters must not only be seen in the context of other letters; rather, they must be viewed in the context of other methods of transmitting information. In this way we can examine how convention influenced content.
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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, January 21st, 2010. Brief report by Gillian Bentley.)

‘Moving Stones’: The Study of Emotions in Greek Inscriptions

Angelos Chaniotis

In this seminar, Angelos Chaniotis discussed the pertinence of epigraphic evidence in the study of the history of emotions, particularly in view of his current research project: “Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions” in the Greek world (c. 800 BCE-c. 500 CE) at the University of Oxford.

Chaniotis stressed that inscriptions are texts, subject to the same questions of composition and authorship as any other kind of text. They are a form of communication with a specific target audience representing conscious action, selection, and composition. Chaniotis suggested that inscriptions make excellent material for the study of emotional display. Literary texts place emotions within a context, but inscriptions may be more representative due to the sheer amount and heterogeneity of the evidence.

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Saturday 24 April, 2010
Trinity College Dublin

(In)formal epigraphy
This meeting examines formality and informality within epigraphic culture. What different types of formality and informality can we detect in epigraphic material and to what extent is this affected by the survival and recording of material? How does the use of space (where do we find epigraphic writing?), agency (who writes? who publishes?), or interaction with the inscriptions (who views them and why?) construct notions – or undermine them – about formality/informality? How do these ideas affect the reuse and reception of inscriptions, ancient and modern?

10.30-11.00: Coffee & registration
11.00-11.45: Dr Graham Oliver (University of Liverpool): Formality & informality in Attic inscriptions
11.45-12.30: Dr Jennifer Baird (Birkbeck College, London): Graffiti & inscriptions in Dura-Europos
12.30-1.00: Lunch
1.00-1.45: Dr Amanda Kelly (NUI Galway): Informal invective: inscriptions on sling shots
1.45-2.30: Short reports
2.30-3.30: Travel to UCD (Coffee on arrival)
3.30-5.00: Prof. Andrew Smith (UCD): Tour of the epigraphic collection in the UCD Classical Museum

Colloquium fees
Registration including tea, coffee, and the sandwich lunch:
€15.00 (BES/AIEGL members), €10.00 (BES student members), €25.00 (non-members).

Registration without lunch:
€10.00 (members), €5.00 (student members), €20.00 (non-members).

Taxi fare from TCD to UCD (for museum trip)
Between €5 and €20 one way (depending on how many people share a taxi. Please bring cash to pay the taxi driver).

For further information, or to reserve a place at the colloquium and a sandwich lunch, please contact Dr Claire Taylor (claire.taylor@tcd.ie). The deadline for registration is 9 April 2010.

(Download a poster of this announcement)

Rencontres épigraphiques de l’EfA
En collaboration avec le Musée épigraphique d’Athènes
Programme 2010
Le mardi de 10h à 12h
au Musée épigraphique, Tositsa 1

Mardi 19 janvier 2010
George Steinhauer (Eπίτιμος Διευθυντής Αρχαιότητων)
« Ένα αναθηματικό μνημείο στην οικογένεια του Αυγούστου από την ακρόπολη της Σπάρτης »

Mardi 9 février 2010
Madalina Dana (EHESS)
« La mobilité des enseignants dans le monde grec : révision de deux inscriptions du Pont-Euxin »

Mardi 23 février 2010
Miltiade HATZOPOULOS (KERA)
« Un décret urbanistique de Kyrrhos (Macédoine) »

Mardi 16 mars 2010
Robert K. Pitt (British School at Athens)
« ID 104-4: Some new readings and old problems from an Athenian building contract on Delos »

Mardi 20 avril 2010
Mathilde DOUTHE (École française d’Athènes)
« La situation linguistique à Delphes aux IVe – IIIe siècles »

Mardi 11 mai 2010
A préciser

Mardi 12 octobre 2010
Christina Kokkinia (KERA)
« Prospection épigraphique à Boubôn (Lycie) »

Mardi 16 novembre 2010
Daniela Summa (IG Berlin, DAI)
« Recherches sur le corpus de la Locride orientale »

Mardi 14 décembre 2010
Francesco Camia (KERA)
« Η λατρεία των ρωμαίων αυτοκρατόρων στην Ελλάδα: η περίπτωση των πελοποννησιακών πόλεων »

Analysis and Uses of Greek Amphora Stamps

International Congress
French School at Athens, University of Rennes 2 – Haute Bretagne
Athens, February 3 – 5, 2010

Thanks to Nathan Badoud for sending notice that the programme and abstracts for this event are now available onlin at the congress website: http://www.efa.gr/Recherche/Manif/timbres/presentation_en.htm

Please send any enquiries to amphore@efa.gr

(If you attend this event, we would welcome a report or review to post to Current Epigraphy. Please contact the editors or leave a comment to volunteer.)

(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, January 14th, 2010. Brief report by Gabriel Bodard.)

Destroying Inscriptions: the authorised and unauthorised removal of inscribed documents in the Greek world.
Graham Oliver

In this seminar, Graham Oliver discussed a few particular inscriptions from the Athenian sphere in the Late Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, using these examples to make some general observations on the removal and erasure of inscriptions.

(1) Re-use

The first examples he discussed were a series of statue bases signed by Antignotos, but their original texts erased when they were re-used and re-inscribed at a later date. As the original inscriptions were not, as far as we know, issued by the demos,  Oliver argues that no special authority was needed to remove them, and in fact they had probably fallen out of use or been taken off display already, since we should assume that inscriptions were not considered to be permanent. Even a handful of fourth century decrees were re-used by pyloroi in the Roman period, which tells us both that even these texts were not permanent and sacrosanct, but that these decrees at least were still intact and in place on the acropolis in the Roman period. The re-use of inscriptions seems to have been fairly normal; even official documents could be removed and re-used without official sanction.
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<http://www.archeomatica.it/call-for-papers

Call for Papers 2010

Archeomatica, Cultural Heritage Technologies

Issues 1-2-3-4 / 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

Archeomatica is a new, multidisciplinary journal, printed in Italy, devoted to the presentation and the dissemination of advanced methodologies, emerging technologies and techniques for the knowledge, documentation, safeguard, conservation and exploitation of cultural heritage.

The journal aims to publish papers of significant and lasting value written by scientists, conservators and archaeologists involved on this field with the diffusion of specific new methodologies and experimental results. Archeomatica will also emphasize fruitful discussion on the best up-to-date scientific applications and exchanging ideas and findings related to any aspect of the cultural heritage sector.

Archeomatica is intended also to be a primary source of multidisciplinary and divulgatia information for the sector of cultural heritage.

The journal is divided in three sections Documentazione (Survey and documentation), Rivelazioni (Analysis, diagnostics and monitoring), Restauro (Materials and intervention techniques).

The issues are also published on line at the website <www.archeomatica.it

Archeomatica invites submissions of high-quality papers and interdisciplinary works for the next issues in all areas related to science and technology in cultural heritage, particularly on recent developments.

If you are interested please submit an original paper to

<paper-submission@archeomatica.it Questo indirizzo e-mail è protetto dallo spam bot. Abilita Javascript per vederlo.

The papers will be subject to review by the scientific board after which they are accepted or rejected in order to maintain quality. Applicants will be notified by email as to their acceptance.

Topics and trends relevant to the Archeomatica Issues include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Methodologies and analytical techniques for the characterization and for the evaluation of the preservation state of historical masterpieces
• On-site and remotely sensed data collection
• Digital artefact capture, representation and manipulation
• Experiences in cultural heritage conservation
• Methods for data elaboration and cataloguing
• Setting of historical architectures
• Intelligent tools for digital reconstruction
• Augmentation of physical collections with digital presentations
• Applications in Education and Tourism
• Archaeological reconstruction
• Electronic corpora
• XML and databases and computational interpretation
• Three-dimensional computer modeling, Second Life and virtual worlds
• Image capture, processing, and interpretation
• 3-D laser scanning, synchrotron, or X-ray imaging and analysis
• Technology
• Metadata of material culture
• Optical 3D measurement
• Cultural heritage recording
• Terrestrial laser scanning
• Virtual reality data acquisition
• Photogrammetric processing
• GPS
• GIS
• Remote sensing
• Culture portals
• Advanced systems for digital culture in museums, archives and art institutions
• Digitalization of cultural property
• Web 2.0 and development of social networks on the top of cultural heritage portals
• Applications of mobile technologies for digital culture and cultural heritage
• Ubiquitous and pervasive computing
• Methodologies and approaches to digitization
• Augmented reality, virtual reality and digital culture
• Access to archives in Europe
• Books and electronic publishing
• 2/3/4D Data Capture and Processing in Cultural Heritage
• Web-based museum guides
• Applications of Semantic Web technologies in Cultural Heritage
• Non-Destructive analytical techniques for the study of the composition and decay of cultural heritage components
• Management of heritage knowledge and data
• Visualization for cultural heritage

Publication Frequency
The journal is published quarterly a year

Submission Preparation Checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

Copyright Notice
Copyright for articles published in this journal is transferred by the authors to the journal.

By virtue of their appearance in this journal, articles can be reproduced or copied in whole or in part, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.

Interested authors should download and read the Instructions to Authors Manual for all details of requirements, procedures, paper mechanics, referencing style, and the technical review process for submitted papers.

Color diagrams, figures, and photographs are encouraged. Papers should be submitted in a plain text, single-spaced Word or RTF file. Formatting should be kept to an absolute minimum. Do not embed graphics, tables, figures, or photographs in the text, but supply them in separate files, along with captions.

Papers, diagrams, tables, etc. should be emailed as attached files to the email address listed in the Instructions Manual.

December 27, 2009

Renzo Carlucci

Editorial Director

<dir@archeomatica.it Questo indirizzo e-mail è protetto dallo spam bot. Abilita Javascript per vederlo.

I’ve received the above picture of a stamp with the following query:

When I was on a trip to Petra, Jordan, I happened to find an object that looks like a lead (bronze?) stamp. It bears an inscription in letters which are definitely Greek. Its diameter is 2 cm, the shape reminds of a truffle (a cone with a rounded tip).

I would really like to know when and where it was made, how it could get to Petra and what it says. You see, I am a philologist passionately interested in connections between nations, but I live in Sweden and here I could not find anyone knowledgeable enough to give me a trustworthy answer. I realize that it is a pretty difficult question to answer as Petra was visited by people from many countries, and Greek was so wide-spread. But please tell me what you think.

I am enclosing a picture on which the image is reversed – that is how the impression of the stamp would look.

Any idea what it says?  Perhaps a reference to Τύχη?

The results of the research program of the Universities of Calabrie, Napoli Federico II, Parma, Roma Sapienza,Venezia Ca’ Foscari on La ‘terza’ Grecia e l’Occidente:

Lo spazio ionico e le comunità della Grecia nord-occidentale Territorio, società, istituzioni

a cura di Claudia Antonetti
Giovedì 7 gennaio 2010
10,00 Saluti del Rettore dell’Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia

Filippo Maria Carinci (Preside della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia) inaugura il convegno

Luisa Breglia (coordinatrice del PRIN, Università di Napoli Federico II) presenta il progetto di rilevante interesse nazionale La ‘terza’ Grecia e l’Occidente

Claudia Antonetti (responsabile dell’Unità di ricerca dell’Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) presenta il convegno

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Paper delivered at the British Epigraphy Society Autumn Colloquium, November 21st, 2009, Oxford. Report by Emma Rix.

‘Inscriptions, Landscape, and the Built Environment in the Eastern Mediterranean and Iran in Late Antiquity’ (Oxford, November 2009)

Matthew Canepa, Oxford, November 21

In this paper, Professor Canepa demonstrated how the rulers of the Sassanian Empire used monumental sculpture and inscriptions to create and emphasise their cultural and racial decent from the Achaemenids, as well as simultaneously interacting with and differentiating themselves from their more recent predecessors, the kings of the Hellenistic Seleucid empire. A crucial feature of this interaction and hence of Canepa’s study was the way in which rock reliefs and other inscriptions interact with and become part of the landscape or building on which they are placed; this interaction can be a key part of their significance.

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Paper delivered at the British Epigraphy Society Autumn Colloquium, November 21st, 2009, Oxford. Report by Charlotte Tupman.

Claiming Space and Memory: the Development of Priestly Inscriptional Practices in Late New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1190-715 BC)

Elizabeth Frood, Oxford, November 21

Dr. Elizabeth Frood of St. Cross College, Oxford, began with a paper which showed that although “epigraphy” does not exist as a discrete discipline within Egyptology, and there are elements to the study of Egyptian texts which do not pertain to the study of inscriptions in Greek and Latin, there is much that is familiar to the classical epigrapher.

Frood introduced a new project, currently in its development phase, to study the epigraphy of Egyptian temple environments. There were three elements to Frood’s paper: an overview of epigraphy in a temple context; a description of the nature and range of this inscribed material; and a case study of one particular inscription that could affect the way in which we understand Egyptian temple environments.

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2010 DHO Summer School
in conjunction with NINES and the EpiDoc Collaborative
28 June – 2 July 2010
http://dho.ie/ss2010

The third annual Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO) Summer School will
take place in Dublin from 28 June to 2 July 2010. Following the highly
successful 2009 Summer School, next year’s event will see the expansion
of popular workshop strands such as:

• A Practical Introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative
• Data Visualisation for the Humanities
• An Introduction to EpiDoc Markup and Editing Tools
• The One to Many Text: Text Transformations with XSLT

The Summer School will feature lectures by Dr. Hugh Denard (King’s
College London Visualisation Lab) and Dr Ian Gregory (University of
Lancaster). Workshop facilitators include Dr Gabriel Bodard (King’s
College London), Dr James Cowey (University of Heidelberg), Professor
Laura Mandell (Miami University of Ohio), Dr Susan Schreibman (Digital
Humanities Observatory), Justin Tonra (NUI, Galway) and Dana Wheeles
(University of Virginia).

Major workshop strands will be conducted over four days allowing
delegates to choose a mini-workshop on Wednesday from one of the
following offerings:

• Geospatial Methods for Humanities Research
• Using Digital Resources for Irish Research and Teaching
• Visualising Space, Time and Events: Using Virtual Worlds for Humanities Research
• Finding the Concepts In the Chaos – Building Relationships With Data Models
• Planning Digital Scholarly Resources: A Primer

The introduction of the one-day mini-workshops allows people to choose
to attend a single-day event only at a reduced cost.

Paper presented at the British Epigraphy Society Autumn Meeting. (Brief Report by Philip Davies)

The Earliest Runic Inscriptions: Problems of Language and Interpretation

Elizabeth Solopova, Oxford, November 21st, 2009

In keeping with the theme of the British Epigraphy Society’s Autumn Colloquium, (‘Epigraphy, but not as we know it’) this interesting paper took us away from the familiar territories of the Mediterranean to consider the Runic alphabet (or, to give it its proper name, futhark) used by Scandinavian and Germanic peoples from the second century through to, in the case of Scandinavia, the early modern period. Specifically, her paper examined the difficulties of interpreting ‘older runes’, these being the futhark as extant from approximately the 2nd to the 6th centuries AD. After this the futhark entered a phase of transition, developing and diversifying into regional variations, known collectively as ‘younger runes’.

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