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Gabriel Bodard edited this page Jan 25, 2023 · 14 revisions

SunoikisisDC Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage, Spring 2023

Session 1: Object description and process in EpiDoc

Thursday January 19, 2023, starting at 16:00 GMT = 17:00 CET (for 90 minutes)

Convenors: Gabriel Bodard (University of London), Martina Filosa (University of Cologne), Usama Gad (Ain Shams University, Cairo)

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/o55W_PHlkyI

Slides: Download slides (PDF)

Outline

This session introduces the EpiDoc encoding scheme and toolset for recording and publishing text and descriptions of ancient material texts, in particular on inscriptions and related objects such as papyri, seals, stamps and coins. We discuss the features of an ancient text-bearing object that are important to record in transparent and machine-readable form, including description, history, prior scholarship, translation, process and use of standards. Students will have an opportunity to encode some objects in XML themselves and think about features that are not clearly documented in EpiDoc guidance.

Seminar readings

  • G. Bodard & P. Yordanova. 2020. “Publication, Testing and Visualization with EFES: A tool for all stages of the EpiDoc editing process.” Studia Digitalia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai 65.1 (2020), pp. 17–35. Available: https://doi.org/10.24193/subbdigitalia.2020.1.02
  • M. Filosa, A. Sopracasa, S. Stoyanova. 2020. “The Digital Enhancement of a Discipline: Byzantine Sigillography and Digital Humanities.” magazén: International Journal for Digital and Public Humanities 1-1, 101–128. Available: http://doi.org/10.30687/mag//2020/01/006.

Further reading

  • Lisa Anderson & Heidi Wendt. 2014. "Ancient Relationships, Modern Intellectual Horizons: The practical challenges and possibilities of encoding Greek and Latin inscriptions." In ed. M.T. Rutz & M.M. Kersel, Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics. Oxbow Books (Joukowsky Institute Publication 6). Pp. 164–175.
  • Monica Berti. 2019. "Historical Fragmentary Texts in the Digital Age." In ed. Berti, Digital Classical Philology: Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution, pp. 257–276. Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599572-015
  • Antonio E. Felle & Norbert Zimmermann. 2014. “Epigraphy, Art History, Archaelogy: A Case of Interaction between Research Projects: The Epigraphic Database Bari (UniBa, Italy) and the Domitilla Projekt (ÖAW, Austria).” In Orlandi, Santucci et al. (edd.) Information Technologies for Epigraphy and Cultural Heritage Proceedings of the First EAGLE International Conference. Pp. 95–116. Available: http://www.eagle-network.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Paris-Conference-Proceedings.pdf
  • Martina Filosa & Alessio Sopracasa. 2020. "Encoding Byzantine Seals: SigiDoc." In Proceedings of the 9th Conference of AIUCD (15-17 January, 2020). Available: https://aiucd2020.unicatt.it/aiucd-Sopracasa_Filosa.pdf
  • Julia Flanders & Scott Hamlin. 2013. "TAPAS: Building a TEI Publishing and Repository Service." Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative 5. Available: https://doi.org/10.4000/jtei.788
  • Gad, U. 2019. “Decolonizing the Troubled Archive of Egyptian Papyri.” Everyday Orientalism. Available: https://everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/decolonizing-papyrology/
  • Mazza, R. 2021. “Descriptions and the Materiality of Texts.” Qualitative Research 21-3, 376-393. Available: http://doi.org/10.1177/1468794121992736
  • Nicola Reggiani. 2017. “Cataloguing Metadata.” in Digital Papyrology I: Methods, Tools and Trends. De Gruyter. Pp. 37–117. Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547474-003

Other resources

Exercise

  1. In preparation for this session, you should install and activate the 30-day free trial version of the Oxygen XML Editor.
    • (If you prefer not to install the trial version of Oxygen, you may also work with Sublime Text Editor or Atom Editor, or even a simple text editor on your computer.)
  2. Starting with a copy of the EpiDoc XML Template for each new document, create EpiDoc files for 2 or 3 inscriptions, papyri, seals or other text-bearing objects of your choice.
  3. As discussed in this session, focus on the "Manuscript Description" features of the edition. Encode as many of the features of object description, document history, and other metadata as you can find.
  4. Further questions to address:
    1. What features of the history and description of this object are not explicitly recorded in the standard edition of this inscription?
    2. What further information would you like to know? Where, if anywhere, might this be found?
    3. What features of history, provenance, procedural metadata and encoding do you not know how to mark up in EpiDoc? Where would you expect to find this missing information?
    4. Did you find any publications or editions that did adequately record the intellectual property and other ethical historical features discussed in this session?
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