latinnow Inscriptions, Interdisciplinarity, Language, Names, Recent work, Religion

LatinNow books!

Over the Christmas period we are celebrating the publication of two books in the LatinNow trilogy. The project has produced or supported the production of several books, including our Manual of Roman everyday writing (vol. 1 and vol. 2), but the three volumes which are being published in the Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents series by Oxford University Press represent, with our Open Access web GIS, the core research output of our project. They are the result of a huge effort of the LatinNow team but also the expertise of a wide network of colleagues across Europe and beyond.

The two appearing in December are the result of workshops held in Autumn 2018 and Spring 2019. Virtually none of the chapters look much like the papers delivered, since we used those thought-provoking workshops as the beginning of a long process of collaboration, which entailed debates, revisions, translations, and reworking. This required patience, especially through the pandemic, and we’re so grateful for the dedication of the contributors. We are delighted that all the books are Open Access, funded by the European Research Council.

The first to appear will be Social Factors in the Latinization of the Roman West. To our knowledge it is the first English-language edited volume devoted to Latinization, which, oddly enough, is a relatively overlooked topic. Historians have noted it has been ‘taken for granted’ and viewed as an unremarkable by-product of ‘Romanization’, despite its central importance for understanding the Roman provincial world, its life, and languages. This volume aims to fill the gap in our scholarship. We took a multi-disciplinary and thematic approach to the vast subject, tackling administration, army, economy, law, mobility, religion (local and imperial religions and Christianity), social status, and urbanism. The contributors situate the phenomena of Latinization, literacy, and bi- and multilingualism within local and broader social developments and draw together materials and arguments that have not before been coordinated in a single volume.

The result, we hope, is a comprehensive guide to the topic, which offers a mix of some more familiar syntheses and more experimental work. The sociolinguistic, historical, and archaeological contributions reinforce, expand, and sometimes challenge our vision of Latinization and lay the foundations for future explorations. We don’t agree with all of the arguments in the volume, notably that on the lack of influence of the auxiliaries of the Roman army in Latinization, but we present our different perspective in the introduction (and in much more detail in the final book of the trilogy). We hope that the volume will act as both a state-of-the-art of the subject and the starting point for further debate and research.

The next book to appear will be Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces. Our scoping of the international academic activity on later Roman and post-imperial sociolinguistic histories and our subsequent workshop demonstrated that the subject is still comparatively understudied and that there was even further potential for progress on sociolinguistics and interdisciplinary collaboration than we had assumed. A deeper understanding is crucial to any reconstruction of the broader story of linguistic continuity and change in Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to the history of the communities who wrote, read, and spoke Latin and other languages, and it clearly had significance for the LatinNow project in terms of understanding the embeddedness, or not, of Latin socially and regionally. The volume offers a study of the main developments, key features and debates of the later-Roman and post-imperial linguistic environment, focusing on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Gaul, the Germanies, Britain and Ireland. The chapters collected in this volume help us to consider (socio)linguistic variegation, bi-/multi-lingualism, and attitudes towards languages, and to confront the complex role of language in the communities, identities, and cultures of the later- and post-imperial Roman western world.

Perhaps even more than the Social Factors volume, we see this volume as a starting point for further research. The introduction sets out some of the key areas on which we think there is scope for further developments and why we think the sociolinguistic and interdisciplinary analyses of the medieval period have not advanced quite as far as for ancient world studies. I couldn’t have brought this volume together without the erudition and support of my colleague at Nottingham, George Woudhuysen.

We will be bringing the third book of the LatinNow trilogy into the world next year. This final volume, co-edited with the wonderful Anna Willi, is more ‘team-written’ than a traditional edited volume and will encapsulate our thoughts on how we can best explore life and language in the Roman west and will present the latest research on Latinization, local languages, and literacies in the provinces in all their regional complexity. It was supposed to be the volume that appeared first, but various parts had to be put off until our data were ‘finalized’ and we have been battling our perfectionist tendencies… It will be last major publication of the LatinNow project, and we hope it will be worth the wait.  

latinnow GIS and data, Recent work

The Reunion: GIS and BES

By Anna Willi

Simona, Anna, Pieter and pizza in March 2020

In March 2020, Simona, Pieter and I met in London for one of our team meetings, with Alex joining us on video call because she had a baby and there was talk of a new virus. The three of us went for dinner and drinks at the end of the day, and we vividly remember the moment we said goodbye because we laughed about our silly ‘COVID handshakes’. Little did we know… Since then I have bumped into Simona in the courtyard of the Senate House, each clutching to our laptops, during a fire alarm that forced us to go for a coffee and a catch-up. Alex and I also met Scott to shoot our conversation about Roman writing equipment, and I have seen Pieter on screen for coffees, team meetings and study sessions. But in March 2020 we never thought it would be so long before we were, as an extended team, all in the same place.

Now we are adapting to a less restricted lifestyle and this month marked a very special occasion indeed, as we all met up together in Oxford for the first time in years, including extended team members that flew in from Spain, the Netherlands and the US.

Group selfie at a really big breakfast table at All Souls

Having updated each other about the numerous LatinNow babies, and grand-babies, we all immediately realised how helpful it is to be working together in the same room, to have time to mull over things and dip in and out of conversations over the course of hours and days. The main reason for the meeting was the joint volume we are currently working on, with each of us writing chapters on Latinization, local languages and literacies in our respective geographical areas of research. It has been really useful to discuss our draft chapters to identify common themes, bounce problems off each other and make sure we cover important aspects without overlapping too much – linguistic developments did not stick to Roman province boundaries and historic periods, after all! This was particularly important for Pieter, Noemi, Maria José and Javier, who are all writing about the Iberian Peninsula, an area with multiple pre-Roman local epigraphies.

Pieter, Noemí, Javier and MJ data wrangling at the CSAD

Getting together also had the advantage that we could all sit around a big screen and have a play with our data. We are also currently working on a WebGIS that will be made publicly accessible later this year. It will allow users to visualise our epigraphic dataset against the backdrop of a map and to add other features such as roads, production centres, settlements and province boundaries, to contextualise it with factors that played a role in the spread of Latin. It will also be possible to filter our epigraphic dataset and for example display inscriptions on stone, non-Latin inscriptions or only funerary inscriptions together with these different factors. Scott, Simona and Pieter in particular have worked hard on our data and we have refined it to the point where it might even allow us to rethink our knowledge about Latin stone inscriptions more generally, but that is a topic for another blog… All of us are making use of the epigraphic dataset for our chapters, so it was really helpful to display on a large screen what we have been turning around in our heads, to play with different sets and to identify data we can improve or would like to add: why are there several lapidary inscriptions in Brittany? Isn’t that a really anepigraphic zone? Zoom in, add the layer for Roman roads, boom: they’re all milestones! Can we add the locations of mints/mining? As it turns out, coin legends are amongst the earliest evidence for Latin literacy in many of our areas. Which of the existing datasets has the most accurate information on settlements? And what are those dots in the ocean? Careful not to dismiss them as dump sites for inscriptions without coordinates (we’ve been very careful to consider that throughout the data cleaning process), Porcupine Bank is real! Discussion often started at the breakfast table and continued all day and into the evening as we wanted to make the most of our time together. It was hard to get a break in! (Shout out to the staff at a certain Pizza restaurant that let three of us hold down a table for eight for almost an hour whilst half the group couldn’t tear themselves away from the mapping! We did order olives, though…)

Scott and Alex cramming in more work just before the British Epigraphy Society meeting began

After three days of intense teamwork, the week ended with the Spring colloquium of the British Epigraphy Society, which was held in memory of Jim Adams, one of our project Special Advisors, at the CSAD. The speakers (including our own Alex and MJ) took us on a tour of exciting projects that were inspired by Adams’ ground-breaking work, from Spain and the northwestern Roman provinces to Illinois, Egypt and Pompeii, exploring regional and social linguistic diversity, translation techniques and even the vocabulary of bodily functions. It was wonderful to see how Adams’ work is being developed further and taken in new directions; his legacy truly lives on, and LatinNow is proof of it.

latinnow Inscriptions, Recent work, Schools, Writing equipment

A Bouquet of Freshly-Sharpened Styluses

By Janie Masséglia

There is a wonderful podcast for those who find it hard to sleep called Nothing Much Happens, where the soft-voiced author talks about pleasingly cosy things until you drop off – making coffee, working in the allotment, closing up at a bookshop. I love the series and have found the episodes all very soothing – all except one, about preparing stationery for the new school year. By the end of it, my heart was pounding in my chest as I was wide awake, too excited to sleep. And why was this? Because I love stationery. Nora Ephron knew what she was doing when she had Joe Fox offer his mystery penpal a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils. Do you, dear reader, have fond memories of WH Smiths in late August? Did you spend half an hour choosing the right hardback notebook from Paperchase to be your teenage journal? Do you now have to pretend it’s your children who make you go into Smiggle?

I make these confessions because I’ve just been watching a draft of Anna Willi and Alex Mullen’s terrific new short film on Roman writing equipment. If you’ve ever wondered what tools the Romans used to write, and what they wrote on, this is for you:

What really struck me during Alex and Anna’s conversation were the kinds of associations a Roman might have had with writing and writing equipment: ancient images of individuals with writing equipment convey messages about status, education, literacy, and even, specifically, the ability to understand Latin since in some provinces, the art of writing and Latin Language were intertwined. These implications of writing equipment were so positive than some people were buried with it, while others had it depicted on their funerary markers:

Relief from a scribe’s tomb found in Flavia Solva. Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria. Photo: Hermann Muck. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

This got me thinking about the associations of writing material today. Stationery isn’t something many people ask to be buried with (although I’d certainly consider it), and it’s not a strong theme in adult self-representation. Posing with notebooks and pens is not a mainstream choice for selfies.

Instead, stationery seems now to carry two potent associations and to be aimed (in marketing terms) at three distinct demographics: the first is the association with creativity. Perhaps the most visible group of users are school children, with greater apparent emphasis on girls. The marketplace is awash with pens, pencils, rubbers, pencil cases, notebooks and folders aimed at school children who are encouraged to prioritise writing by hand, and old enough to have an opinion about how they want to express their identity. The second group of “creative” stationery users prioritised in modern marketing are artists, using pens and paper as their preferred medium for illustration rather than text.

The second association is with an old-world sophistication. Fountain pens in particular, have taken on a special connotation as “special” writing implements, packaged and priced like lifestyle accessories such as expensive watches or jewellery. Here, the use of the pen seems to take on a more symbolic meaning: it adds formality and gravitas to the process of signing contracts, cards and letters. Likewise, the hidebound notebook has become a statement of vintage charm and expense in the age of the mobile phone and laptop. We all know people who love stationery, especially in the academic community. One of my undergraduate recently pointed to my own pen and whispered “Cool. Old school.”  I hadn’t realised that my leaky, plastic, short-cartridge fountain pen could be seen as intentional retro styling.

Why is stationery now a niche interest among adults? Perhaps the presumption that everyone is literate precludes the need to prove it. Perhaps the rise of the keyboard has made stationery look out-dated. Perhaps the age distinction between those who write by hand and those who use a keyboard has, in effect, rendered cheap, practical stationery “kid’s stuff” for many people. In any event, the significance of stationery isn’t what it was… ahem… 30 years ago, and certainly not what it was 2000 years ago. Just because an object looks familiar, doesn’t mean it has the same social meaning. Join Anna and Alex to find out more!

If you’ve not already seen our open access ebook on the subject, do take a look at Anna’s magnificent work in full.  

latinnow GIS and data, Inscriptions, Recent work

Our epigraphic dataset

By Simona Stoyanova, Scott Vanderbilt and Alex Mullen

We play with a lot of data in the LatinNow project and we thought we’d tell you a little about our biggest dataset: the 180,000 record strong epigraphic database.

Considering the large geographical and temporal scope of LatinNow, we asked the EAGLE-Europeana network to share their epigraphic data from the north-western provinces. They kindly agreed and that was the start of our core dataset. That meant that we had EDH, EDCS, Hispania Epigraphica, Ubi Erat Lupa and PETRAE, amongst others, all in EpiDoc, while data from RIB is being added directly by Scott. Of course, the different focus and approach of each of these corpora mean that the granularity of encoding is different – e.g. some projects annotate evidence for dating or very detailed provenance information while others are more interested in the text and provide minimal metadata. However, the shared use of the EpiDoc standard and EAGLE’s efforts enabled us to leverage all available metadata and to query records on a scale otherwise impossible.

We gradually started adding our own corpora into the mix – e.g. Gaulish (Gallo-Greek and Gallo-Latin), Raetic and Noric, as well as the spindle whorl collection discussed here. Using the same attributes and vocabularies allows us to query and compare features of these inscriptions alongside those coming from EAGLE and RIB. Simona also worked with Francesca and Alex on picking a set of socio-linguistic attributes, starting from the massive list in the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of the Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age and building on Francesca’s and Alex’s linguistic research on specific regions. After much debate we decided on half-a-dozen most representative and relevant for our provinces (particularly those with relevance for language contact). Mapping these with our more precise coordinates gives us a clearer picture of socio-linguistic processes across the western part of the empire.

Representation of data flows to and from the LatinNow project (Simona Stoyanova)

Data can be a messy business and has to be curated and analysed with care and understanding of the principles followed in its collection. Differences in encoding, as mentioned above, come from project-specific needs, while differences in, say, bibliographic reference style, may come from national practices, even personal preferences. Another issue can be the files’ date of publication. We noticed some duplication of records between our dataset and the current EDH, which turned out to be a case of EDH having updated those records post-2015 – the date of the EAGLE data transferred to us. Further complications arose from the different approach towards fragmentary texts/objects. While Trismegistos catalogues all parts of a fragment under one identifier, other data providers treat each fragment as a separate item with its own identifier. Each of these issues, and numerous others, had to be addressed with a combination of epigraphic, publishing, encoding and data science experience. Reconciling varying approaches to the recording of our material is no easy task and is not a trivial task.

We, especially Scott and Pieter, worked hard on the improvement of geospatial coordinates, since mapping is a key tool in our research. This involved pouring over publications in an attempt to figure out how to pin down ‘the south-west corner of Don Pedro’s farm’ and trying to work out why different projects had recorded sometimes radically different co-ordinates. It was always important to work out whether ‘dump sites’ had been deployed by projects, i.e. a consistently chosen central location used to place inscriptions whose provenance was not known e.g. beyond a province.

Messing around with mapping, Latin inscriptions and the road network (Pieter Houten)

We also spent a lot of time adding to and harmonizing attributes. A starting point for our metadata consolidation was the EAGLE vocabularies for material, object type and text type. The importance of EAGLE’s attempt at reconciling complex terminology in multiple languages from multiple projects cannot be overstated. It has made projects like ours possible and has encouraged the epigraphic community to work with more concertation on the digital future of our field. Currently, there is an effort from both the epigraphy.info and the Linked Pasts community to review and streamline the vocabularies, and build more robust Linked Open Data mechanisms around them. While we wait for this work to be completed, we spent hours debating issues such as: what is a Tafel vs table vs plaque vs tablet vs plate; do we actually need to leverage them with one or two terms, or can we keep them all and still perform meaningful searches and analyses?

But without a doubt the most time-consuming task was deduplication. Projects at the time of the download from EAGLE did not consistently link up their data – e.g. with a Trismegistos ID or similar. As a result, with downloads from multiple different digital epigraphic projects, some of the same objects had as many as half a dozen records. Finding them is easy if they share identifiers, but the majority were not straightforward to find, requiring bibliographical/text comparisons, for example. And ultimately, for a frustratingly large number, time-consuming checking of original publications. Once we have a fully deduplicated dataset, Scott will set in motion ‘The Great Merge’, which will allow the metadata from multiple projects to show under one new merged record, making one set of very rich records for our provinces.

Our metadata efforts are now bearing fruit beyond our own convenience. We are collaborating, for example, with the Michel Feugère at the CNRS Lyon, where he and his team are working on a corpus of inscribed small finds drawn from his Artefacts website. Our taxonomy has been consulted by them, to ensure consistency and compatibility between our data sets.

All of our research outputs will be open access and we follow the FAIR principles of data management for our digital assets. Our final results will be available in Zenodo, GitHub, and as many other repositories as we can find. We are in conversation with our colleagues to work out how best to feed back to them our additions to the data they provided. And, importantly, we will follow the best practice set out by the epigraphic community on standardization and Linked Open Data.

We thank all those projects who have shared data with us and look forward to our linked data future!

latinnow Inscriptions, Recent work

Graffiti and Gastronomy in ancient Lyon

By Morgane Andrieu

Dr Morgane Andrieu is an Associate Researcher on the LatinNow Project, leading a sub-project on the graffiti of Lugdunum (ancient Lyon) with the ArAr Laboratory (UMR 5138).

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The theatre and the museum © Laurence Danière / Lugdunum

It has now been seven months since the completion of the team phase of the project in the archives of the Lugdunum – Museum and Roman Theaters (Lyon, France). I’ve since moved on to do the more solitary work of analysing the enormous trove of archaeological evidence we discovered in the archives. In these seven months, I first had to adapt to the loneliness caused by losing the team, which was then exacerbated by the COVID-19 confinement situation, leaving the luckiest of us stuck at home. As a consequence, it is not without a little twinge of sorrow that I now look back on the great team I was able to work with last summer in Lyon…

The team stage consisted of opening all the boxes from the museum containing pottery sherds to (re)discover all the graffiti from the Roman city of Lugdunum (ancient Lyon). Not only does the museum have one archive on site, but it also has a second, even larger archive located on the outskirts of the city. In addition to the help I received from the employees of the museum, a total of 37 people, including both volunteers and students, have also contributed at various times to this research project from 2nd May to 30th August 2019. For some of them, it was their first time taking part in an archaeological project and it was clearly an emotionally rewarding and exciting experience. Not only were they granted access to a part of the museum not open to the public, but they were actually able to handle the material. A teary-eyed Gilles summed up the emotion best when he remarked “2000 years of history in my hands!”.

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Gilles F. discovered a new anepigraphic graffito, never published (photo: M. Andrieu).

In addition to providing an opportunity to establish direct contact with history and archaeology, it also enabled everyone to become the discoverer of one or several Roman inscriptions, sometimes never seen or long-forgotten amongst other sherds, bones, metal objects, and other items housed in the archives.

The first challenge for me was to train the team in the fundamentals of archaeology. What is an archaeological context? What about a stratigraphic unit? How can you tell the difference between pottery, bone and other materials? How does one distinguish a pot sherd from the sherd of an amphora or a tile? And on the subject of graffiti, What is a graffito and what is not? How should one extract a graffito from its original box and record it? All this information is a lot to take in, especially for those who were discovering archaeology for the first time. To my pleasant surprise, everyone showed real enthusiasm and commitment to rediscovering these inscriptions. Everyone immediately understood their importance of the part they were playing in this international project, namely to help to preserve our cultural heritage and participate in the creation of a previously unpublished corpus that will be shared with the public and the scientific community.

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Michelle G., Dominique D. & Gilles F., newly retired and faithful volunteers of the project (photo: M. Andrieu).

Furthermore, although the inscriptions were often incomplete or short, everyone appreciated the significance they have in contributing to a better understanding of the diffusion of Latin throughout the local culture. As the most common writing surfaces in Roman antiquity – organic material such as papyrus, wax and wooden tablets – have long since disintegrated, funerary inscriptions and graffiti on walls and pottery remain as the primary source of writing of daily life available to us today. The graffiti on pottery we uncovered complement the funerary inscriptions found in Roman cemeteries. They enable us to access the writing of the living in many different contexts (housing, shops, workshops, etc.) instead of focusing only on the funeral inscriptions’ often stereotyped formulas. These graffiti are amongst the few, and perhaps the last testimonies we have to study writing in urban contexts. They’ve proven an invaluable source of insight into the cultural contacts and cohabitation between populations in the region – we found Latin, Greek and Gaulish names! Other pieces of information the team discovered, such as drawings (gladiators, gods, etc), sentences, prices, indications of capacity, of content, of origin, etc. painted a picture of daily life in Lugdunum between the 1rst and 3rd century AD.

Each day we discovered a new batch of graffiti, with names of ancient inhabitants of Lyon, men, women and children, with more or less skillful handwriting. The work was demanding, involving lifting boxes, working in a dusty environment and concentrating for long periods of time on a repetitive task. But the rushes of adrenaline and the excitement of all the new discoveries made it all worthwhile and, along with the good-spirited and enthusiastic team, created a relaxed and happy atmosphere.

This experience was also an opportunity to share our archaeological knowledge with the team. It happened that two of the volunteers, Marie Blot and Romain Deparpe, were also pottery specialists, and they taught others – especially the students – how to produce archaeological drawings of pottery.

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Pottery specialist Marie Blot (on the right) teaching drawing (photo: M. Andrieu).

However, Marie and Romain were not the only ones who had something to share with the rest of the team. Monique shared her recipe of Gallo-roman bread by Caton, Michelle her recipe of quiche Lorraine (a French specialty) and Valentine shared her uncle’s awesome cake. As you can tell, French people love to find any opportunities to enjoy a good meal together!

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Lunch break, the team gathering around the Roman recipe of “Les petits pains de Caton”, by Monique D. (photo: M. Andrieu).

Overall, it was a satisfying experience both intellectually gastronomically (everyone must have gained a kilo or two!). In total, the team ‘unearthed’ more than 900 graffiti. That is 840 new graffiti that can now be added to the 60 graffiti last published by A. Allmer and P. Dissar in 1892, the only publication to pay significant attention to the graffiti corpus of ancient Lyon. But the fact that this 128 year-old publication existed at all was a pleasant surprise, as few French museums have shown an interest in these kinds of objects. Given that these archives and this area of research had remained largely unexplored for over a century meant that, at the start of the project we had little idea of what to expect, so finding such a large number of unpublished graffiti was particularly satisfying and, dare I say, quite a relief!

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Allmer et Dissard 1892, volume 4

Since completing the work in the archives last autumn, the work that followed mainly consisted of drawing, photographing and recording all the graffiti found and uploading all the information to a database. As this work takes a huge amount of time, students and volunteers have continued to help. To date, Dominique Durieux has, on her own, drawn more than 495 graffiti. That is a considerable help that she generously brings to the project, even during the C-19 lockdown.

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Dominique Durieux, drawing some graffiti at home under lockdown.

We still have much to learn as we parse, archive and analyze the evidence we’ve uncovered to determine what these fragments of writing, found all across the city, can tell us about the ancient inhabitants of Lyon. Furthermore, despite the enormous effort this summer to sort through the Lugdunum Museum archives, a large number of crates containing archeological material from various excavations around Lyon remains unsearched. To cover the whole city, our research will have to be extended to the other archives of Lyon. Monique L. has encouraged us to ‘Carry on, don’t give up!’ and we will, as long as we can secure funding and enlist great volunteers. To all, a huge ‘Thank you!’. Without your help, I would still be working in the museum’s archive as I write to you… or perhaps, in these peculiar times, not. To my friends, colleagues and readers, I wish you all the best during lockdown. Stay safe!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

latinnow Recent work

Postcard from DC: panels, pastries and posters

By Simona Stoyanova

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My work year began in full force in early January in Washington, DC, where I represented the LatinNow team at the Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting and Conference, followed by the North American Congress for Greek and Latin Epigraphy. Apart from dramatic landscapes and superb museums, DC proved to be an appropriate meeting place for epigraphers with its numerous monumental inscriptions all over town.

To begin with, I was very pleased to hear that, even though this trip was our first presentation of the project outside Europe, plenty of our US-based colleagues of all career levels had heard of us and wanted to talk details – I did not have idle coffee breaks. I was part of a very interesting linguistics panel at SCS aMarchBlogPic2nd presented the only material culture-based paper. There followed a lively discussion and I am happy to report the audience was fascinated by our scope, approach and methodology, especially the application of modern linguistic theory to ancient linguistic material, and the integration of digital humanities. The room was packed – impressive for 8 am on 2nd January. Significant amounts of coffee were consumed.
After an amazing few days of great papers, catching up with old friends, making new friends, gawking at book stalls, snacking on Institute for the study of the ancient world-stamped M&Ms (true story) and talking all things LatinNow, the SCS came to an end. Which meant a mad dash across town for the beginning of NACGLE, held in leafy Georgetown.

MarchBlogPic3Each morning, during a session appropriately called Posters and Pastries, I would stand next to our glossy creation (click here to view it) and provide narration and explanation for the various bubbles, boxes and arrows. Some of the most interesting discussions of the entire trip happened in the poster room over a warm drink and a croissant. I was a little star struck to meet and talk in person with scholars I have long admired and extremely chuffed to pass on their praise to the rest of the team back home via WhatsApp. One such person called us a ‘powerhouse’.

It was great to see more and more research projects taking into consideration texts on non-lapidary materials and looking into the connections between different kinds of literacy within the same urban space. John Bodel’s keynote set the tone with his newly coined term ’epigraphic mode’, emphasising the intention of communication behind a written message, regardless of its support material, placement in space or execution. On a more personal note, I was extremely happy to see that EpiDoc is no longer an exotic term at an epigraphic conference, and to meet a dozen people I’ve trained over the years.

Finally, a para-conference application of expertise was called for at the Library of Congress, when an interested member of the public in the same tour group was asking about mosaic techniques and I was able to offer some details. Much delight and thanks from the tour guide ensued, too. (Impact!)

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latinnow Inscriptions, Recent work

From London to Lyon

By Adam Thain

For two weeks in August, I was a research assistant for LatinNow’s sub-project about inscriptions on ceramic fragments in Lyon. An undergraduate Classics student at King’s College London, I had learnt about the venture from the graffiti project leader Morgane Andrieu, who presented as part of the LatinNow panel on ancient sociolinguistics in the western Roman provinces at the FIEC/CA conference in July. I was supported by an accommodation bursary from GAROM which meant that I was able, for the first time, to get a foothold in academic research.

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As part of my trip to France, I visited two Gallo-Roman Museums and met some archaeology and history of art students from France who were assisting the project too. It was incredible to read never before seen Latin inscriptions, and to practice conversational and academic French and also the identification of ancient, medieval, and modern pottery. I also saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time when changing trains in Paris!

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I stayed in an apartment in the north east of Lyon, in the Villeurbanne region. A short 15-minute walk from the archaeological reserve, it was perfect for our early start. Outside the gates of the reserve, which looked like any other slightly dilapidated warehouse in the eastern quarter of the city, the whole team of us would gather. One by one we would exchange either kisses or a handshake, a practice which I was rather unfamiliar at the beginning of the trip, and missed when back in London!

After coffee or tea, we would begin. We would either open a new crate of boxes from the archive, or continue working through the remaining boxes from the previous day. Each was full of wonders that had often not been seen for years, possibly decades. Removing the separate bags from the boxes, we gently spilt any contents onto our tables and sifted through each – checking for even the tiniest remnants of graffiti.

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The atmosphere was one of friendship and shared dogged determination: each find produced a cheer, and everyone was offered a peek at the discovery. We would share long lunches – outside, weather permitting – where we would exchange stories, gossip, and a huge variety of cheeses I did not know existed, which I was strongly encouraged to try.

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Each box was fascinating! Animal and human bones including entire skulls, extraordinarily thin Roman glass, accidentally inventoried pebbles with tiny painted numbers, entire pots, large chunks of mineral deposits, amusing fragments of erotic scenes from long-broken pottery, and far more delights were to be found in the crates from the reserve.

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After we were taught how to draw pottery fragments scientifically and extrapolate the type and form, I did so as much as possible to practice my pottery identification. I found it helpful to draw out the main pottery types with French labels, especially when it came to making our inventory for all graffiti found at the reserve. It was fantastic to transcribe the tiny inscriptions, even if a single letter, and to see the data appear!

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Whilst in Lyon, we were shown the professional activities of Lugdunum Museum and the Roman theatres on the site and given a guided tour of the current exhibition and galleries by their curator, Nicolas Dupont. It was extremely helpful to contextualise the work which we were undertaking, and broadened my understanding of the history of the area. On the weekend we were given free access to the Gallo-Roman museum and archaeological site of Saint-Romain-en-Gal in Vienne. I can only describe it as the best museum I have ever been to: I would happily spend numerous days exploring there!

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I learnt so much by working on the project in Lyon, and cannot wait to continue working in the field of classical epigraphy. Merci beaucoup pour tout!

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latinnow Iberian Peninsula, Inscriptions, Interdisciplinarity, Recent work, Touring Exhibition

FIEC-CA 2019 and the unveiling!

By Pieter Houten

 

Curmi in London
Curmisagios, our tour mascot

July started with a bang as the team met for FIEC-CA 2019 in London. Now teams meeting is not really a big thing, but the LatinNow team is spread across five countries on two continents. Moreover, the team has expanded rapidly this year: as you may have seen in the earlier blogs, five new members started earlier this year. And we’re not including Curmisagios as a team member, although we probably should. So London provided a great backdrop for introductions and research discussions.

 

UCL pic team
The LatinNow team at FIEC/CA 2019

In addition to the team meetings, London provided something else, the reason for gathering in London: FIEC-CA 2019. The LatinNow team organised a panel on Ancient Sociolinguistics: Exploring Latinization in the Roman West. Alex opened the panel with a paper introducing our project and then zooming in on the ways we can investigate Latinization and literacy in Britannia. Thereafter our collaborators from Spain, María José Estarán and Noemí Moncunill, explained the different processes of Latinization of the Palaeohispanic-speaking communities by looking into the history of literacy of the different regions and the uptake of Latin. Francesca Cotungo showed how to use theonyms and linguistic analysis of dedications to discern the origin of gods and dedicants. Morgane Andrieu argued that archaeologists are needed to add a whole new layer to understand literacy and Latinization in Gaul. By revisiting the boxes of ceramic in archives, she has found hundreds of new graffiti from Southern Gaul and is now working with LatinNow on the graffiti of Lugdunum (Lyon). All in all, we had an inspiring panel: after it was closed for a coffee break the discussions continued for quite some time in our coffee-less room.

caistor Mullen
Alex introduces the panel and then tackles Britannia

MJ Froehner
María José on one of the marvellous Celtiberian tesserae hospitales (tokens of guest friendship). This one, in the shape of a hand, is also in our tour display!

Last, but definitely not least, we had an unveiling of our Touring Exhibition. The process up to this unveiling has been a lengthy one: planning a European tour, thinking about the objects, creating the replicas and the display. But what must have been the most challenging is the fact that the display, labels and communications have been made in six different languages (English, Castilian, Catalan, Dutch, French, German). One cannot have a project on multilingualism and then tour Europe with all the information in English. Nonetheless, all came together for the first time in London.

 

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Sunday morning at 9h00 all the items of the Touring Exhibition arrived at the Publishers and coffee corner in the Institute of Education. Despite never having done it before, the team had set up the 15m2 display (table, backdrop and ca. 60 objects) in merely half an hour. After this small feat it was time to step back and take a look. And it was rather exciting to see it for the first time and no one could quite believe it had all arrived in the back of Alex Mullen’s car. Quickly apprehension kicked in – ‘How would the audience respond?’. During the first coffee break it quickly became clear that the exhibition was well received. In no time we were having interesting discussions with people on the Latinization of the Northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire. But the cherry on the cake must have been the response of the only child present: ‘WOW, look at all the ancient things!’ We hope to hear this in six different languages this autumn.

latinnow GIS and data, Recent work, RTI

New digital approaches to ancient texts

By Simona Stoyanova

Digitext workshop posterThe LatinNow summer started with a training session for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham and our team on Digital techniques and resources for textual research. Led by Dr Gabriel Bodard (Institute for Classical Studies, London) and me, the DigiText workshop introduced our colleagues to four major digital approaches to humanities research: digital philology, text encoding, linked open data and linguistic annotation. The topics we covered included introduction to online resources, imaging techniques for cultural heritage, methods in digital palaeography, EpiDoc XML markup, LOD annotation, treebanking and translation alignment. While most of our examples were taken from the ancient Mediterranean, the principles and practices applied to all disciplines and cultures represented in the audience – from Scandinavian studies to modern languages translation studies. Our colleagues enjoyed a good amount of practice, starting with marking up modern gravestones in EpiDoc (the more errors and erasures the better), annotating and disambiguating place names in Recogito and aligning translations in Ugarit. Our aim was to showcase these major topics and what progress has been made in digital classics, as well as to highlight the applicability of these approaches and methodologies to virtually all textual research. We had fruitful discussions and quite a few ideas for future collaboration, both national and international – watch this space!

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Dr Kathryn Piquette setting up the RTI highlight kit

Our second trip to Nottingham’s leafy University Park campus was for a training session in Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), led by the fabulous Dr Kathryn Piquette. We were joined by a couple of colleagues all the way from Vindolanda who pulled all the stops with their multispectral filters. In two days we learnt how to put up and dismantle the RTI highlight setup, how not to drop a £2000 camera on a museum object, how to use a transmitter and how to hold one’s hand steady at 60°, 45°, 20° and 15° with no wrist tilting. The training covered the theory and physics behind RTI, followed by lots of practice. On the second day we processed the images we had taken the day before and produced our finished RTI images. The fortuitous incident of a foot just slightly nudging the board holding the object being imaged during one session showcased how/what things could go wrong, what to keep an eye out for and how to attempt fixes. We discussed various image-enhancing techniques and tools, tried one on a newly-imaged tablet from Roman Vindolanda and confirmed the reading of a stamp on a terra sigillata mould sherd from the University of Nottingham Museum collection. It was a whirlwind of a training, we learnt a great deal and are massively grateful to Kathryn!

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A sherd of a mould from the University of Nottingham Museum collection being RTI-ed. It turns out that LEGO is ideal for holding the spheres!

 

 

 

 

 

 

latinnow Inscriptions, Interdisciplinarity, Recent work

St Andrews’ Celtic conference in Classics: ‘archaeologizing’ epigraphy and some navel-gazing

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By Alex Mullen

St Andrews was deluged with Classicists in mid-July for the Celtic conference in Classics. The atmosphere was one of scholarly fun and I even skipped nearly the entire ceilidh (I adore ceilidhs – awesome organized fun!) because I got into a debate about, essentially, ‘archaeologizing’ epigraphy.

This was a direct result of the panel: ‘(Un)set in stone’ on fresh approaches to epigraphy at which Eleri Cousins (St Andrews) was keen to get us to think about innovative ways to treat epigraphy. I could only attend the first day but it was clear that she had brought together a set of people with diverse and complementary interests, including those who were not primarily epigraphists and even, goodness, a non-classicist! Eleri had instructed me to present something ‘theory driven’ and it was great to spend some time before the conference thinking about how to talk in this specific context about the theory, methods and concepts that guide my research, in this case a discussion of Gaulish, the Celtic language of Gaul.

About a decade ago Carrie Vout (Cambridge) asked me at an interview ‘What is interdisciplinarity?’. One of those questions that’s easy to ask but so difficult to answer. I think I’ve spent the last decade working it out. Although my answer at the time, something along the lines of ‘It’s when you integrate not just the evidence from a range of disciplines, but also the methods and approaches’, hasn’t changed that much, I feel I now might practise what I preach. Indeed, Eleri’s panel and the discussions afterwards made me wonder how unusual I might still be in my close engagement with several of the disciplines within Classics. This is thanks to my broad undergraduate degree, when I began to specialise in Indo-European linguistics, sociolinguistics and ancient history, graduate training which added Celtic linguistics and investigations into the material culture of the Iron Age and Roman West, and the luxury of years of Research Fellowships which allowed me to pursue archaeology properly. I might not have realised it at the time but marching up and down fields strapped into geophysics equipment humming tunes to keep pace indirectly transformed my research. By becoming ‘also an archaeologist’ not only do I understand the discussion of material culture better, but attending the conferences, discussing issues at dinners, collaborating on projects has made me think in more interdisciplinary ways. And it has made me an advocate of broad and deep classical training in our Schools, Higher Education and beyond.

mag.jpgFieldwork in some challenging conditions in Kent

Prompted by Eleri, in the talk I discussed what you could term ‘an archaeological approach to epigraphy’. Naturally this could integrate key approaches in archaeology, for example appreciation of materiality (focus on the object and its relations to human practice), context (at all scales) and phenomenology (the experience of creating, displaying, viewing etc.), but also tools used by archaeologists, such as petrological analysis, RTI or GIS to coordinate a range of data. Perhaps, however, what might be most useful to adopt in epigraphy from modern practices of archaeology is the constant questioning of assumptions and weighing up of possible interpretations driven by self-analysis and criticism. Many epigraphists do this, of course, but perhaps not with the level of care and rigour of those trying to make material culture ‘speak’. Texts can make us think they are telling us what we need to know, and we need to question that every time.

RTIReflectance Transformation Imagining viewer showing section of Greek text