http://www.archaeology.co.uk/index.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1

You are not authorised to view this resource.
You need to login.

So not in Planet Atlantides.

http://planetosgeo.crschmidt.net/

Zero-Gravitas:~ tom$ nslookup planetosgeo.crschmidt.net
Server: 205.152.37.23
Address: 205.152.37.23#53

** server can't find planetosgeo.crschmidt.net: NXDOMAIN

Nikolay Sharankov has just posted a thorough and helpful response to my recent query about a Roman boundary inscription from Bulgaria.

He includes revised readings -- not only of the inscription for which I have the photo -- but for all four originally published by Hristov in Minalo.

The Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg (part of the growing EAGLE federation) is a tremendous resource. It was designed as a searchable database, beginning in the 1980s and adding a web interface in 1997. Work on both the content and the database itself continues; in fact we're discussing ways to hook up EDH to Pleiades.

But, given its origin as a search-oriented database, the EDH is not set up for easy browsing (i.e., "stumbling upon" by clicking links) or with obvious, stable URLs that point to individual inscriptions. Happily, epigraphers have long preferred to assign stable ID numbers to inscriptions in specific publications. This practice maps well onto database IDs and -- fortunately for us -- EDH makes use of its ID numbers in its web-facing search interface. We'll have to peer under the hood of the main search page, but once we know what to look for, building links into the database is relatively straightforward.

The most obvious type of link a blogger might want is a link to a particular inscription. We need to find two things:

1. The URL to which the search query is POSTed
2. The proper field name to use for the ID number

The HTML <form> element carries an attribute (action) whose value provides the search target:

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="http://edh12.iaw.uni-heidelberg.de/offen/suchen2.html">

Then we have to look at the "name" attribute on the appropriate "input" element to figure out what variable we need to use. A bit of inspection turns up:

<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="hdnr" SIZE="7" MAXLENGTH="6">

from which we need only the string "hdnr".

Now we're ready to construct our query string:

• http://edh12.iaw.uni-heidelberg.de/offen/suchen2.html?hdnr=000838

For web use, I like to construct these in a more human readable form, like: EDH HD000838.

You can use other variables to create URLs that point to other types of searches. For example, we can search for inscriptions attributed to the ancient city of Cyrene in Libya:

• Inscriptions from Cyrene in EDH

Now we can cite EDH as we need to on the web.

This applies to all aggregators available at planet.atlantides.org.

Henceforth, I'll be suppressing any and all feeds with futuristic datestamps that cause future-dated entries to hover at the top of the aggregator results ahead of truly new content on other blogs. I'll revisit such suppression decisions on a more-or-less monthly basis.

So, if your posts are not getting dated right in your feeds, or if you have an event feed that stamps entries with dates for the event (rather than when the notice is published), you will likely see your feed content dropped from the aggregators. If you fix your blog feeds to take care of such a problem, please drop me an email and I'll reinstate the feed.

I may apply a similar policy to feeds that frequently redate-to-present multiple past posts in which there's no obvious update of content.

In working up our OpenLayers + SVG image tracing demo today, Sean and I selected a picture of a Roman boundary marker as our example image. Charlotte Roueché had taken this picture in the garden of the Bulgarian National Museum in 2006. She sent it to me because of the work I'd done on my Chapel Hill dissertation about Roman boundary markers. This particular inscription proved to belong to an instance of demarcation that I'd treated in the dissertation, but this text was not specifically in my catalog. I assumed it was either unpublished, or had been so at the time I was finishing the dissertation.

It appears now that this inscription is either unpublished, or I've failed to spot the publication. I provide the account and background below in the hopes that readers can provide a citation for this particular text, or information about other evidence related to this particular event that I have so far missed. Corrections to what follows are also welcome.

Background

In 2003 or so I wrote (for the dissertation) about this group of inscriptions as follows:

Six boundary markers from various sites in Bulgaria attest to a demarcation between the provinces of Thracia and Moesia Inferior [in AD 135]. These are the only markers in the published epigraphic record that explicitly marked a provincial boundary without making reference to any of the cities or communities in either province. The word provincia is not used. The ethnics corresponding to the provincial names are: Moesi and Thraces. The markers were placed, on Hadrian’s authority, by an otherwise unknown individual named [M(arcus)] Antius Rufus, who is thought to have been acting as a special legate of the emperor. It is most unlikely that he was a governor of either of the provinces in question, since neither governor can have possessed a sufficient span of jurisdiction to affect both provinces. The context and motivation for this demarcation are completely obscure.

Here's a transcription and translation of this particular text, made from the image:



By the authority of the emperor Caesar, son of the god Trajan Parthicus, grandson of the god Nerva, Trajan Hadrian Augustus, father of the country, pontifex maximus, (holding the) tribunician power 20 (times), consul 3 (times), M(arcus) Antius Rufinus placed boundaries between the Thraces and the Moesi.

Notes

The rectangular stone was prepared with a deep rectangular campus that left a heavy external border (I do not have measurements). This frame (and an uninscribed portion of the campus) is broken away at the top right corner. Beginning at the level of line 7, the border has been snapped away at a depth just below that of the campus. The bottom of the stone is missing, but it is clear that the main text terminates above a large empty space before the break.

• 5, end: Part of an N on the upward-sloping portion of the border (i.e., just outside the prepared campus). This may have included a ligature with T that has been worn away(?).
• 6, end: What appears to be a small, irregular T cut across the transition from prepared campus to border.
• 7, end: if TI were inscribed on the border, this has been lost; there is no room for the characters in the prepared campus.
• 7-8: Rufinus: PIR2 A784 + addenda; Thomasson 1984 20:78 + 22:16; Aichinger 1982, 198-199.

Comments

Now, in looking at this image more closely (and starting to hunt for a corresponding publication), I see that I missed at least one of these inscriptions, and yet another has subsequently appeared. But I still haven't been able to identify a published text of this particular inscription. It clearly shares a source text with [EDH HD045725] = [AE 2004.1306] = I. Christov, Minalo 11, 2004, 6-7, no. 4 (citations from EDH), but the text is laid out differently on the stone. It would be interesting to have access to an image of this doppelgänger, but I can't immediately put my hands on a copy of the journal Минало. These are the only two of the inscriptions I know of that put the Thraces before the Moesi; the majority of the texts have the inverse order.

Concordance of Editions

Here's my list of texts and corresponding publications as it stands now:

• Elliott 2004.95.1; EDH HD042659; IGLNovae 73; ILBulg 357; ILS 5956; CIL 3.749
• Elliott 2004.95.2; EDH HD042812; ILBulg 429; CIL 3.12407
• Elliott 2004.95.3; EDH HD006328; ILBulg 390; AE 1985.729; Banev 1981, no. 1
• Elliott 2004.95.4; EDH HD006340; ILBulg 386; AE 1985.730; Banev 1981; CIL 3 p. 992 n. 749
• Elliott 2004.95.5; EDH HD006322; AE 1985.733; Božilova 1985; ILNovae 51; IGLNovae 72
• Elliott 2004.95.6; EDH HD031971; ILBulg 358; CIL 3.14422/1; AE 1902.106
• EDH HD042658; ILBulg 184; AE 1912, 16 n. 56; Filow BullSocArchBulg 2 (1911), 271 (not checked, bibliography per EDH)
• EDH HD045725; AE 2004.1306; . Christov, Minalo 11 (2004), 6-7, no. 4 (not checked, bibliography per EDH)
• [ Horothesia, "Demarcation Between the T(h)races and Moesi" (22 February 2007) ]

Bibliography

Short titles used here are glossed in the PDF versions of my abbreviations list and works cited list. Eventually, all these works will be folded into the Pleiades bibliography.

This is the first in a highly irregular series exploring aspects of my attempt to turn my dissertation (or parts thereof) into a digital publication using the EpiDoc customization of the Text Encoding Initiative tagset (in XML). I'm starting using a batch of boundary inscriptions from Roman Cyrenaica, partly because I'm working with a team in London and Cambridge that is working on the definitive publication of the Roman Inscriptions of Cyrenaica (IRCyr) as collected and analyzed by Joyce Reynolds. This collection will include a number of previously unpublished boundary inscriptions.

Today's topic: epigraphic bibliography

There are various examples of code below, but you can also download a fully encoded example.

A proper epigraphic edition includes a complete history of previous published editions, published derivative texts, corrections and, often, commentary on same. There are various common mechanisms for presenting these citations in print, usually in a compact form that makes liberal use of abbreviations and short titles. Thus, text 62.2 in my dissertation (of Claudian date), presented the following bibliography:

EDH HD011697 (Latin); SEG 26.1819; AE 1974.682; *Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1.

Here, order signifies date and the asterisk indicates the edition I follow in my own catalog. So, we can read this as:

Originally published in Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1, whence derivative editions in AE 1974.682, SEG 26.1819 and EDH HD011697 (the latter only providing the Latin portion of this bilingual Greek/Latin text).

Often, such bibliographies include other notation to indicate the "genetic lemma" (derivative relationships) between publications. So, one could have produced something like:

[EDH HD011697 (Latin)] = [SEG 26.1819] = [AE 1974.682] = Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1

where the square brackets indicate derivative editions, i.e., those that derive from another published edition rather than autopsy of the stone and/or reference to a squeeze, rubbing or photograph. This particular lemma is a little misleading, since the provisional EDH edition actually derives from the edition in AE, which is itself derivative of the Reynolds edition.

How to do this in EpiDoc?

Let's start with something like the more prose-ish of the above examples, since this is the approach IRCyr is using (demonstrated in ALA2004 and IAph2007). First, EpiDoc calls for the bibliography to be wrapped in an appropriately typed <div> element, as follows:

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1,
    whence derivative editions in AE 1974.682, SEG 26.1819
    and Elliott 2004, 167.62.2. The Latin portion of the
    text is reproduced in EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)
    on the basis of AE.</p>
</div>

Part of the reason to do our bibliography in XML is to be able to encode relationships, assertions and semantic distinctions in a way that is machine actionable. On the bibliographic front, we might want to be able to search, sort and index by these other editions, or link to them if digitally available. That means we need to mark each citation as a discrete bibliographic citation, and TEI provides the <bibl> element for this purpose:

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was
   <bibl>Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1</bibl>,
   whence derivative editions in
   <bibl>AE 1974.682</bibl>,
   <bibl>SEG 26.1819</bibl>
   and
   <bibl>Elliott 2004, 167.62.2</bibl>.
   The Latin portion of the text is reproduced in
   <bibl>EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)</bibl>
   on the basis of AE.</p>
</div>

We may want to have a search function distinguish between original editions and those that are derivative, so we need to encode that distinction too. We don't want to have to parse text strings and try to infer the meaning of phrases like "original publication" or "derviative". Rather, we'll use the standard TEI "type" and "subtype" attributes on the <bibl> element to make this distinction clear for our little silicon friends. The values we're using for this attribute are specific to the EpiDoc customization of TEI.

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="primary">
     Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1
   </bibl>,
   whence derivative editions in
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     AE 1974.682
   </bibl>,
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     SEG 26.1819
   </bibl>
   and
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     Elliott 2004, 167.62.2
   </bibl>.
   The Latin portion of the text is reproduced in
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)
   </bibl>
   on the basis of AE.</p>
</div>

There's additional tagging internal to each <bibl> element that we can/should do to facilitate sorting, searching and linking to digital/digitized works, but we'll skip over that here (check out the example file for the full encoding).

The only thing our example doesn't do that we might like is encode the derivative relationships between the various editions. We know that one is "primary" and the others "derivative", but it's not clear what the path of derivation is for each one. EpiDoc doesn't currently have guidance for this, and I'm not sure what the broader TEI community thinks (I'm posting a link to this entry on TEI-L to find out), but it occurs to me that this would be pretty easy to do with the TEI <link> element. We'll need unique identifiers on each <bibl> element to make use of this approach.

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was
   <bibl xml:id="reynolds-1971-1" type="edition" subtype="primary">
     Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1
   </bibl>,
   whence derivative editions in
   <bibl xml:id="ae-1974-682" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     AE 1974.682
   </bibl>,
   <bibl xml:id="seg-26-1819" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     SEG 26.1819
   </bibl>
   and
   <bibl xml:id="elliott-2004-62-1" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     Elliott 2004, 167.62.2
   </bibl>.
   The Latin portion of the text is reproduced in
   <bibl xml:id="edh-hd011697" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)
   </bibl>
   on the basis of AE.</p>
   <link targets="#reynolds-1971-1 #ae-1974-682 #seg-26-1819 #elliott-2004-62-1"/>
   <link targets="#ae-1974-682 #edh-hd011697"/>
</div>

Stay tuned for further adventures, in which we exploit some of this bibliographic tagging, and then move on to encoding the epigraphic text itself.

Jeff Becker wrote in regard to yesterday's post on Roman ports in Libya. He notes that Archeoblog's coverage of the story includes some images. These look to me to be a subset of the images included in the original press release from the Soprintendenza del Mare, Regione Siciliana. Thanks Jeff!

Members of my multitudinous audience may remember that, back in October, Sean Gillies and Richard Talbert made a presentation about Pleiades at an event entitled "Using New Technologies to Explore Cultural Heritage" (co-sponsored by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities and the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche).

Transcripts of that event have now been published on the NEH website. These are available in PDF format, along with PDF versions of the speakers' presentation slides.

By way of rogueclassicism I found out about a brief notice from ANSA entitled "Scoperti due antichi porti romani in Libia". A slightly longer piece in La Repubblica repeats the "hitherto unknown" assertion. Sicilia Informazioni provides a longer and clearer report on the same information under the title "Ritrovato un porto romano sulle coste della Libia".

I found the piece a bit odd, since it claimed the "discovery" of a Roman port at Hamama in Libya (kml) that "might be" the Phykous (Greek: Φυκοῦς) mentioned by Strabo (17.3.20) and Ptolemy (4.4.5; Latin: Phycus) ... and yet the Barrington Atlas (and after it, Pleiades) have no hesitation in placing Phykous at that very spot. If there were some significant doubt about the siting of a named, attested place, we would have expected the Atlas to indicate such.

A little digging reveals that this inconsistency is probably an accident of editing in the media reports of recent archaeological work. The press release that seems to be behind these stories is posted on the website of the Soprintendenza del Mare, Regione Siciliana (one of the partners in the expedition). This report acknowledges that the site of Phykous (mod. Hamama) has been well-known for some decades, but notes that it have never previously been subjected to systematic survey. Indeed, BAtlas cites G.D.B. Jones and J.H. Little, “Coastal settlement in Cyrenaica,” JRS 61 (1971) 64‑79 for Phykous (via JSTOR, for those with access), where the identification with Hamama is represented as secure.

The press release goes on to communicate some interesting and hitherto unknown things (with illustrations):

• The expedition team (just returned) conducted a surface walk of the site, 3D laser mapping and total station survey; the site walk recovered 500 artifacts, which have been cataloged for subsequent analysis.
• Major structures identified include: a possible lighthouse foundation [previously noted by Jones and Little, p. 74], a large rectangular building, a possible theater, numerous rock-cut tombs and quarry sites, as well as a large "control structure" on the summit and two rock-cut caves in the hillside (one possibly used as a church, the other as a synagogue). [Jones and Little had noted "the remains of low walls extend[ing] over an area of c. 24 hectares" (p. 74).]
  
• Surf and wind limited the team's ability to conduct an underwater survey, but they did tentatively identify the remains of a long harbor mole, faced with rectangular blocks and filled with rubble.
• Analysis of pottery and masonry may indicate a foundation date as early as the 4th century BC (attic pottery), with the most frequent and intensive use occurring in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. [Jones and Little had noted "pottery ranging from black-glazed ware to Byzantine coarse wares, indicating an occupation from the fourth century B.C. to the sixth century A.D." (p. 74).]
  
• Further west, toward Benghazi (ancient Berenice), the team conducted a limited search at modern El-Ougla (I can't locate this place). Although wind and surf inhibited their work, they identified the heavy foundation of a probable tower as well as two circular tanks possibly used for producing garum. Surface materials are reported to be consistent with occupation and activity during the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.

In addition to David Meadows at RC, thanks are due to my employer (NYU) for purchasing a JSTOR subscription that includes JRS, to Patromoniosos.it for posting the text of the press release (a link to the original would have been helpful) and to Brian Turner (UNC-CH) for the Strabo and Ptolemy references (part of his work on enhancing BAtlas content for forthcoming addition to Pleiades). And then of course there's Google's search, without which I wouldn't have been able to hunt down the original.