Current Epigraphy
ISSN: 1754-0909

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.)

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 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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Reports given at British Epigraphy Society Autumn Meeting, November 21, 2009. (Brief summary by Gabriel Bodard)

1) Nicholas Milner on recent work at Oinoanda

Nicholas reported on the ongoing epigraphic work at the Oinoanda excavations (where he has been resposible for new inscriptions since 1994), funded by the DAI. New finds since 2007 include:

• several inscriptions on an octagonal tower in the Hellenistic wall including references to Apollo Hypsistos; the tower seems to have been an outdoor shrine to the Sun, and seems to settle the taxing question of which god was referred to by Hypsistos at this site;
• an inscription marking the foundation by C. Iulius Moles of a temple to Caesar, which appears to belong to the reign of Augustus;
• in 2009, a base bearing a verse inscription to Nemesis and a sundial;
• an inscribed lintel block from an early Christian church.

2) Ulrike Roth on Albert Rehm

Ulrike (incoming BES secretary) addressed the meeting with a question rather than a report. Albert Rehm was a German school-teacher and ancient historian (known for his epigraphic work), active in the periods before and after the Second World War, and was outspoken on the subject of the Nazi approaches to ancient history. He described himself as a “Third Humanist”, although this clearly meant something different from Werner Jaeger’s use of the same label. Rehm believed firmly in the importance of working in the field (where Jaeger was reluctant to sully his view of the ancient world by visiting modern Greece), hence his epigraphic research. Ulrike is looking for information, even stories and anecdotes, about Rehm’s fieldwork, in the hope that this might cast light on his vision of “Third Humanism”.

3) Jonathan Prag on financial inscriptions from Taormina

Jon described a collaborative project to republish and analyse 13 financial inscriptions from the Sicel city of Taormina (which was allied to Rome in the Second Punic War), that have been published in scattered publications of variable quality. (8 of the inscriptions are in IG 14; 4 were published by Manganaro from inadequate photographs.) The inscriptions reveal many details of the city’s finances and administration in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC: there are changes over time in the math used, as well as in the administration, the calendar, and the currencies in use. One text in particular offers a thorny problem of dating: it is written in Greek, so should be from before the Roman colony in 27 BC; the reference to the month of  “Quinctilis” should be from before 46; the reference to “duoandres” should be after 44. Manganaro suggests that the text may date from the period when Sextus Pompeius governed the city between 44 and 36, but much remains unclear. The new publication will make new joins between some of the text fragments, and will also thoroughly address issues with the provenance of the inscriptions, some of which are moved and only partially recorded in the excavation reports.

Paper presented at British Epigraphy Society Autumn Meeting. (Brief report by Gabriel Bodard)

Writing in Cypro-Minoan: Beyond Decipherment.

Silvia Ferrara, Oxford,  November 21, 2009

In this paper, Ferrara introduced the audience to problems in the decipherment and interpretation of inscriptions in the Cypro-Minoan script. Since there are only some 217 documents (comprising 4000 signs) in this script, decipherment is difficult if not impossible, and so identification of the language and context of the texts will depend more upon quantitative elements, the objects themselves, their distribution and other archaeological information.

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EPIGRAPHY AND THE GREEK HISTORIAN

Institute for Classical Studies
Ancient History Seminar

Thursdays at 4.30 pm
G 22/26 South Block, Senate House
Spring term 2010
Organiser: Christy Constantakopoulou (Birkbeck)
c.constantakopoulou@bbk.ac.uk

14 January Graham Oliver (Liverpool) Destroying inscriptions: the authorised and unauthorised removal of inscribed documents in the Greek world

21 January Angelos Chaniotis (Oxford) Moving stones: the study of emotions in Greek inscriptions

28 January Robin Osborne (Cambridge) The letter: a diplomatic history

4 February Riet van Bremen (UCL) A Hellenistic list of donors (?) and some other puzzling lists

11 February Irene Polinskaya (KCL) A new corpus of ancient inscriptions from the northern Black Sea

25 February Stephen Lambert (Cardiff) Priests and priestesses in Athenian honorific decrees

4 March Polly Low (Manchester) Constructing lives from stone: inscriptions and biographical traditions

11 March Claire Taylor (Trinity College, Dublin) Graffiti or inscriptions? Some problems from Attica

ALL WELCOME.

Dates: 3-4 December. Organizer: Manuela Mari

Diritto ed economia nella Grecia antica. Norme e riflessione giuridica su proprietà, transazioni, scambi commerciali.

Incontro di studi.

Università di Cassino

Aula Magna – Facoltà di Ingegneria – via G. Di Biasio, 43 – Cassino

Giovedì 3 dicembre.

Ore 15. Apertura dei lavori.

Ore 15.30.

Laura Boffo (Università di Trieste). Leggi e mercanti nel mondo greco.

Anna Magnetto (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa). La città e il mercante: incentivi e agevolazioni nel mondo greco di età classica ed ellenistica.

Manuela Mari (Università di Cassino), John Thornton (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”). Riassetti di proprietà e cittadinanza, staseis e rapporti tra re e città nella Grecia ellenistica.

Edward E. Cohen (University of Pennsylvania). Commercial contracts with slaves: legal and economic significance at Athens.

Donatella Erdas (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa). Garanti, appalti pubblici e economia della città: alcune osservazioni.

Ugo Fantasia (Università di Parma). I magistrati dell’agora e i prezzi del grano nelle città greche.

Ore 18.30.

Discussione.

Venerdì 4 dicembre.

Ore 9.30.

Francesco Guizzi (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”). Case e patrimoni: Gortina.

Stefano Ferrucci (Università di Siena-Grosseto). Case e patrimoni: Atene.

Michele Faraguna (Università di Trieste). Diritto, economia, società: tombe e periboloi ad Atene.

Adele Scafuro (Brown University, Providence). The Economics of the Athenian Court System.

Lucia Criscuolo (Università di Bologna). A proposito di en patrikois.

Alice Bencivenni (Università di Bologna). Prostagmata di Seleuco IV.

Ore 12.30.

Discussione.

22-24th June 2010, Great North Museum, Newcastle

A Practical Epigraphy Workshop is taking place for those who are interested in developing hands-on skills in working with epigraphic material. The workshop is aimed at graduate students, but other interested parties are welcome to apply, whether or not they have previous experience. With expert tuition, participants will learn the practical aspects of how to record and study inscriptions. The programme will include the making of squeezes; photographing and measuring inscribed stones; and the production of transcriptions, translations and commentaries. Participants may choose to work on Latin or Greek texts.

The course fee is £100 but we hope to be able to provide bursaries to participants to assist with the cost. Accommodation will be extra, but we are arranging B&B nearby for around £30-40.

Places on the workshop are limited and applications will be accepted until 31st March. For further details please contact: charlotte.tupman@kcl.ac.uk.

The Practical Epigraphy Workshop is sponsored by The British Epigraphy Society, an independent ‘chapter’ of the Association Internationale d’Epigraphie Grecque et Latine.

British Epigraphy Society Autumn Colloquium

FOREIGN EPIGRAPHY
or “Epigraphy, but not as we know it”
&
XIII Annual General Meeting

Saturday, 21 November 2009, MBI Al Jaber Building, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

10.30 (coffee) – 17.30 (close)

Full programme at BES website (although older events seem not to be archived, so this may disappear).

We receive short notice of an international congress on ancient magic, to be held in Rome next week: Contextos Magicos / Contesti Magici. Full programme is online at the Italian Culture Ministry: announcement.

You are cordially invited to a triple-decker inaugural lecture at King’s
College London: “Decoding Pasts, Building Futures”:

• Richard Beacham, Professor of Digital Culture
• Charlotte Roueche, Professor of Late Antique & Byzantine Studies
• Harold Short, Professor of Digital Humanities

Centre for Computing in the Humantities & Classics/Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies

Friday 23 October 2009, 17.30 Edmond J. Safra Theatre, Strand Campus.

Tea will be served from 16.45, and the lecture will be followed by a
reception, with a chance to visit the Arts and Humanities Research Fair

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/week/arts/pastfuture.html

Enquiries/responses to: cch@kcl.ac.uk

October 8-9, 2009, e-Science Institute, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh

Organisers: Gabriel Bodard and Stuart Dunn

Programme:  http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/Object_Artefact_Script

The text upon an object is both evidence for and part of its form and therefore its function; just as the construction and purpose of an object gives context to and aids in the interpretation of text. Indeed, the form of an object effects the placement and design of text and decoration upon it. Non-verbal decorations drawn or painted on an object fall somewhere between (2-D) text and (3-D) physical object: like the text they are added by the scribe or artist, they have semantic (if not verbal) connotation, and are often taken out of the material context of the object; like the object, however, they are considered as artistic and visual content, and are hard to digitize meaningfully. Nevertheless they sometimes come closest to crossing the artificial boundary and may be studied by both philologists and archaeologists. Text may also be constrained by the placement of decoration on a surface, or vice versa.

This conference will bring together scholars from a variety of fields who study objects and texts side by side to discuss the ways in which advanced computer science methods can enhance both their own work and the nature of their collaborations with other researchers working on the same objects.

Methods to be considered will include (but need not be restricted to):

• Linking/connecting text and images of objects within digital editions/projects, or making object description an intrinsic part of a text edition;
• Advanced imaging (3D surface scanning, multi-spectral imaging, non-invasive volumetric scanning, stereographic/photogrammetric imaging) to bring lost or damaged text/engraving out of objects;
• Automated text/character analysis; identification of text fields/columns/lines;
• Reconstruction and visualization of damaged, unclear or complex text-bearing objects;
• Digital placing of objects in historical and archaeological contexts to highlight textual/non-textual features.

The Epigraphic Culture(s) of Late Antiquity

Dates: Friday 26 – Saturday 27 June, 2009

Venue: Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg, Hauptstrasse 242 – Heidelberg (http://www.iwh.uni-hd.de/index.html)

Programme:

Friday, 26th of June 2009

9.00 Christian WITSCHEL/Carlos MACHADO: Welcome and Introduction

I – The Late Antique Epigraphic Habit in the Western and Eastern Parts of the Roman Empire – Quantitative and Qualitative Aspects

9.10: Christian WITSCHEL (Heidelberg): “Spätantike Inschriftenkulturen im Westen des Imperium Romanum – ein Überblick”

10.10: Charlotte ROUECHÉ (London): “Late Antique Inscriptions in the
East: Evidence and Problems”

11.10 – 11.30: Coffee Break

II – Late Antique Inscriptions in their Social and Physical Context

11.30: Carlos MACHADO (São Paulo/Heidelberg): “Dedicated to Eternity? The Re-Use of Statue Bases in Late Antique Italy”

12.30 – 14.00: Lunch Break

14.00: Dennis FEISSEL (Paris): “Elites et magistratures municipales dans l’épigraphie protobyzantine”

15.00: Silvia ORLANDI and Mara PONTISSO (Rome): “Discorsi su pietra: oratoria ed epigrafia nel Tardo Impero”

16.00 – 16.30: Coffee Break

16.30: Rudolf HAENSCH (Munich): “Zwei unterschiedliche epigraphische Praktiken: Kirchenbauinschriften in Italien und im Nahen Osten”

III – Regional Studies

17.30: Judit VÉGH (Heidelberg): „Inschriftenkultur(en) und Christentum im spätantiken Hispanien“

18:30: Lennart HILDEBRAND (Heidelberg): „Die Entwicklung der spätantiken Epigraphik Südgalliens – Inschriften als Indikator für gesellschaftliche Veränderungen?“

Saturday, 27th of June 2009

09:00: Ignazio TANTILLO (Rome): “Some Observations on the Evolution of the Epigraphic Habit in Late Roman Africa (with special reference to Tripolitania)”

10.00: Stephen MITCHELL (Exeter): “The Epigraphy of Asia Minor in Late Antiquity”

11.00 – 11.30 Coffee Break

11:30: Leah DI SEGNI (Jerusalem): “Late Antique Epigraphy in the
Provinces of Palaestina and Arabia: Realities and Change”

12.30 – 14.00: Lunch Break

IV – The New World of Christian Epigraphy

14.00: Claire SOTINEL (Paris): “How Christian is Christian Epigraphy?”

15.00: Lucy GRIG (Edinburgh): “Cultural Capital and Christianization:
the Metrical Inscriptions of Late Antique Rome”

16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break

16.30: Final remarks

For further information, visit http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/fakultaeten/philosophie/zaw/sag/workshop_epigraphic_culture.html

Or contact Carlos Machado: carmachado@gmail.com