Objects as inscription carriers: The materiality of inscribed cultural assets in digital space
Online workshop on 22 October 2024
The NFDI4Objects Community Cluster ‘Objects as Inscription Carriers’ is organising an initial workshop. The aim is to evaluate the status quo of the recording and researchability of inscribed cultural artefacts from different specialist perspectives. The starting point is the research data of labelled objects, which are (so far) accessible in databases and digital editions in varying quality and structure.
Inscribed artefacts have so far been used in research with a focus on their texts and not their material properties. Specialisations and disciplinary approaches have promoted this imbalance. In contrast, the workshop will focus on the materiality of the written media and their modelling in the research data: How and what data is captured, indexed and made searchable in a digital environment? The workshop will compare the status quo, the possibilities and feasibilities offered by the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data, as well as their handling in various disciplines. The workshop is designed to be interdisciplinary and will bring together representatives from different disciplines, firstly to meet the needs of different disciplines and their typical object types, and secondly to ensure an exchange of ideas and inspiration across disciplinary boundaries.
Possible approaches to the topic of the materiality of the written record in the context of the workshop include at least one of the following criteria:
- Case studies with a disciplinary approach: identification of problems, needs and feasibility of research data on inscribed cultural heritage
- Implementation of material object properties in existing metadata formats and data models (Epi Doc TEI, Epigraf): Challenges and solutions from the organisational perspective of research data
- Relationships and mutual references between the materiality of inscriptions and their text: Implications for research data needs?
- Multimodal modelling of research data & future-oriented explorative approaches
- Overview of the findability and researchability of material properties of inscriptions from a specialist user perspective
- Identification of feasibilities and needs.
The speakers contributing to the workshop include representatives from Near Eastern archaeology, building research, ancient epigraphy, medieval and early modern inscriptions, numismatics and the digital humanities. The online workshop is conceived as the start of an initiative to formulate recommendations for this area of research data management in line with the target perspectives of NFDI4Objects. The event will be followed up by a conference in Berlin at the end of April or beginning of May 2025.
Digital meeting room
No registration is necessary.
The workshop will take place online via Webex: https://spk-berlin.webex.com/meet/c.klose
Programme
10:00 a.m: Welcome & introduction
10:15 a.m: Dr Katharina Kagerer (Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen) / Jens Borchert-Pickenhan (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig), Object and material in the project “Die Deutschen Inschriften des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit”
10:45 a.m: Prof. Dr Rudolf Haensch (German Archaeological Institute, Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy), Text, carrier and context: On the material of ancient Greek inscriptions
11:20 a.m: PD Dr Ulrike Ehmig (CIL / BBAW), The two scales of inscriptions. Latin inscriptions in the digital world
11:50 am: Dr Tobias Arera-Rütenik (University of Bamberg), Language of the object - form of the inscription: Coherence of two information carriers - experiences from 15 years of digital documentation of Jewish cemeteries
1:20 pm: Prof. Dr Elisa Roßberger (Freie Universität Berlin), Challenge accepted, lessons learned. On the way to an Annotated Corpus of Ancient West Asian Imagery: Cylinder Seals
13:50: Dr. Christoph Klose (Münzkabinett Berlin / NFDI4Objects), Key factors of data acquisition of inscribed objects in archaeological and numismatic databases
2:20 pm: Anja Gerber (Klassik Stiftung Weimar / NFDI4Objects), Advantages of a minimal data set for the merging of epigraphic and object-based data
3:00 pm to 3:30 pm: Summary & final discussion
Further information on the CC ‘Objects as inscription carriers’ can be found in our portal.