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Publication in a digital world
One of the key points about I.Sicily is that it will be continuously updated – it is not a one-time publication, but an ongoing project. When something new is discovered about a text, or we manage to study it directly, the edition will be revised and updated. But that presents a very particular problem: how…
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I.Sicily at a ‘Crossroads’
We are very excited to announce the receipt of an ERC Advanced Grant award, under the acronym ‘Crossreads‘, with the full title ‘Text, materiality, and multiculturalism at the crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean‘. ‘Crossreads’ will offer the first coherent account of the interactions and interplay of linguistic and textual material culture in ancient Sicily over…
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A summer in Sicily
One of the advantages of currently co-directing an excavation at the beautiful site of ancient Halaesa is that it means that we’re based in Sicily for a whole month. This provides us with a wonderful opportunity to make a series of visits to museums and sites all over the island, in pursuit of inscriptions. It…
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Voci di pietra: multiculturalism and integration in Ancient and Late Antique Sicily
Following on from the exhibition ‘voci di pietra’ (voices of stone) at the Museo Civico Castel Ursino in Catania, the University of Catania has joined forces with the original collaborators in the exhibition (the Museo Civico, the Comune di Catania, the CNR-ISTC, the Liceo Artistico Statale “M.M. Lazzaro”, and the University of Oxford) to bring…
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From pre-print to post-print: come study with us!
We are excited to announce the possibility of a funded doctoral scholarship to work with the I.Sicily data/project on the epigraphic culture of Sicily and the impact of digital publication. This forms one part of a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Centre on the theme of Publication beyond Print. The Leverhulme Doctoral Centre will challenge the dominance of the…
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Inscriptions in the Castello Ursino, Catania
One of the most exciting projects I.Sicily is currently involved with is a four-way collaboration to catalogue the epigraphic collection of the Museo Civico Castello Ursino di Catania and to display a selection of the material in a new exhibition, ‘Voci di pietra’, ‘Voices of stone’, which opened on Friday, 14 July 2017. This project…
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It’s all about collaboration
The most frequently heard response to a description of the I.Sicily project, at least in Sicily, is ‘pazzesco!’ Anyone who sets out to develop full digital records of all the inscriptions of ancient Sicily (more than 4,000 texts on stone) is clearly mad. Assessments of sanity aside, the reality is that the project is only…
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Data visualisation
One of the things we hope that I.Sicily will make possible is the active exploration of data on Sicilian epigraphic culture – you will be able to filter the data held in I.Sicily actively on the website, and you will be able to download any dataset you build with the filters as a .csv file (or…
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A progress report
We now have 3238 records in the I.Sicily database, but we’re not yet online (not long now!) – why not? The major challenge throughout this stage of the project has been moving from an old, flat Access table of metadata (i.e. information about the inscriptions: bibliography, provenance, description, classification, etc.)… ….to the much richer and…
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Epigraphic picnics
Some 1600-1800 years ago, six men decided to commemorate the fact that they had just enjoyed the pleasures of a local spring. They did so by engraving their names on the rock face above the spring. Having tracked the inscription down on a hot July day in Sicily, and stood in the spring in order…
I.Sicily 