Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity

231 Pages·2010·4.91 MB·English

by  Gabriel Bodard

Digital Research in the Study
of Classical Antiquity
Edited by
Gabriel Bodard and Simon Mahony
Digital ReseaRch in the stuDy
of classical antiquity
Digital Research in the arts
and humanities
Series Editors
Marilyn Deegan, lorna hughes and harold short
Digital technologies are becoming increasingly important to arts and humanities
research and are expanding the horizons of our working methods. this important
series will cover a wide range of disciplines with each volume focusing on a
particular area, identifying the ways in which technology impacts specific subjects.
The aim is to provide an authoritative reflection of the ‘state of the art’ in the
application of computing and technology. the series will be critical reading for
experts in digital humanities and technology issues but will also be of wide interest
to all scholars working in humanities and arts research.
ahRc ict Methods network editorial Board
Sheila Anderson, King’s College London
chris Bailey, leeds Metropolitan university
Bruce Brown, university of Brighton
Mark Greengrass, University of Sheffield
susan hockey, university college london
sandra Kemp, Royal college of art
simon Keynes, university of cambridge
Julian Richards, university of york
seamus Ross, university of glasgow
Charlotte Roueché, King’s College London
Katherine sutherland, university of oxford
andrew Wathey, university of northumbria
Other titles in the series
Revisualizing Visual culture
Edited by Chris Bailey and Hazel Gardiner
isBn 978 0 7546 7568 6
interfaces of Performance
Edited by Maria Chatzichristodoulou,
Janis Jefferies and Rachel Zerihan
isBn 978 0 7546 7576 1
Digital Research in the study
of classical antiquity
Edited by
gaBRiel BoDaRD
King’s College London, UK
siMon Mahony
University College London, UK
© gabriel Bodard and simon Mahony 2010
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
gabriel Bodard and simon Mahony have asserted their right under the copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company
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union Road 101 cherry street
farnham Burlington
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Digital research in the study of classical antiquity. --
(Digital research in the arts and humanities)
1. civilization, classical--Data processing.
2. civilization, classical--computer network resources.
3. civilization, classical--Research--Methodology.
i. series ii. Bodard, gabriel. iii. Mahony, simon.
930'.072-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Digital research in the study of classical antiquity / by [edited by] gabriel Bodard and
simon Mahony.
p. cm. -- (Digital research in the arts and humanities)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-0-7546-7773-4 (hardback) -- isBn 978-0-7546-9523-3 (ebook)
1. civilization, classical--Research--Methodology. 2. civilization, classical--Research--
technological innovations. 3. civilization, classical--study and teaching--technological
innovations. i. Bodard, gabriel. ii. Mahony, simon.
De15.D54 2010
330.0285'57--dc22
2010001406
isBn 9780754677734 (hbk)
isBn 9780754695233 (ebk)
V
contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Series Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
List of Abbreviations xix
introduction 1
Simon Mahony and Gabriel Bodard
PARt I ARChAeoLoGy AnD GeoGRAPhy
1 silchester Roman town: Developing Virtual Research Practice
1997–2008 15
Michael G. Fulford, Emma J. O’Riordan, Amanda Clarke
and Michael Rains
2 Diversity and Reuse of Digital Resources for ancient
Mediterranean Material culture 35
Sebastian Heath
3 Space as an Artefact: A Perspective on ‘Neogeography’
from the Digital humanities 53
Stuart Dunn
PARt II text AnD LAnGuAGe
4 contextual epigraphy and XMl: Digital Publication and
its application to the study of inscribed funerary Monuments 73
Charlotte Tupman
vi Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity
5 a Virtual Research environment for the study of Documents
and Manuscripts 87
Alan K. Bowman, Charles V. Crowther, Ruth Kirkham
and John Pybus
6 One Era’s Nonsense, Another’s Norm: Diachronic study
of greek and the computer 105
Notis Toufexis
PARt III InfRAStRuCtuRe AnD DISCIPLInARy ISSueS
7 Digital Infrastructure and the Homer Multitext Project 121
Neel Smith
8 Ktêma es aiei: Digital Permanence from an ancient Perspective 139
Hugh A. Cayless
9 Creating a Generative Learning Object (GLO): Working
in an ‘Ill-Structured’ Environment and Getting Students to Think 151
Eleanor OKell, Dejan Ljubojevic and Cary MacMahon
10 the Digital classicist: Disciplinary focus
and interdisciplinary Vision 171
Melissa Terras
Bibliography 191
Index 207
list of figures and tables
figures
1.1 screenshot of a matrix from the iaDB, illustrating how
complicated the sequence can be 17
1.2 a typical context recording card 23
1.3 Digital pen counterpart to the recording card 24
1.4 One of the digital pens from the VERA project in use on site 27
1.5 screenshot of the Victorian section of
<http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk> 30
1.6 screenshot of the late Roman section of
<http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk> 31
3.1 google earth-based visualization of Minoan peak
sanctuary sites in north-eastern crete 59
3.2a Known position looking north from Arborfield Church,
Berkshire, uK in google earth 60
3.2b actual view from the same location 61
3.3a aggregation of georeferenced photos from multiple sources
showing the line of Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland, UK 64
3.3b similar aggregation effect over stonehenge 64
5.1 Digital photograph of Demotic census record for lycopolite
nome with manual annotations 89
5.2 tolsum stilus tablet: Digital photograph of front face 93
5.3 tolsum stilus tablet: enhanced digital photograph of front face 94
5.4 VRe interface: the tolsum tablet with annotations 97
5.5 VRE interface: Annotated list of magistrates’ names from Chios
(seg 27, 381) linked to an lgPn database query 99
9.1 the three-stage interdisciplinary design process model 159
9.2 From the ‘Introducing the Questions’ storyboard
to the Learning Object screen 161
9.3 The storyboard became ‘Access Views’ 163
viii Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity
tables
2.1 google results for numismatic keywords 40
7.1 Models of texts and structured objects 128
notes on contributors
Gabriel Bodard works at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College
london. he has a doctorate in classics and specializes in greek religion, literature,
epigraphy and papyrology. he was Research associate at the Thesaurus Linguae
Graecae, and has worked on Digital Humanities projects since 2001, including the
inscriptions of aphrodisias (of which he is co-author). he is currently working on the
inscriptions of Roman cyrenaica, and consulting on the andrew W. Mellon-funded
Integrating Digital Papyrology project. He is on the steering committee of the British
epigraphy society and the technical council of the text encoding initiative.
Alan K. Bowman is camden Professor of ancient history and Director of the
centre for the study of ancient Documents, university of oxford, which
has pioneered the development of ict tools for the study and web delivery of
ancient texts on papyrus, wood and stone. Projects with substantial ICT elements,
completed or in progress, include: the Vindolanda tablets on-line; script, image
and the culture of Writing in the ancient World; image Processing of ancient
Documents; Building a Virtual Research environment for the humanities (with Dr
c.V. crowther, Dr M.a. fraser, Jisc). he is a former member of ahDs steering
Committee and member of the British Academy’s IT Committee.
Hugh A. Cayless holds a PhD in Classics and a Master’s of Science in Information
science, both from unc chapel hill. he has contributed to a number of Digital
Humanities projects and is one of the founders of the EpiDoc consortium. He
currently works for the nyu Digital library technology services group on a
portal for papyrological research, under a grant from the national endowment for
the Humanities. He also serves as a co-investigator on an NEH-funded project at
unc chapel hill to develop methods for linking manuscript images, transcriptions
and annotations.
Amanda Clarke has been Research fellow at the Department of archaeology,
university of Reading since 1997, and is the Director of the silchester field
School, the Department of Archaeology’s training excavation at Silchester Roman
town. she is also involved in the excavation and post-excavation publication of
other departmental fieldwork projects including that of Pompeii. She has over
twenty years of professional archaeological fieldwork experience, most recently
with york archaeological trust on many of their large urban sites. she is also a
teaching fellow in the Department of archaeology at Boston university on the
student training excavations in Belize, central america and in Mahon, Menorca.