Pasts Imperfect (10.6.22)
Digital Prosopography, Latin in China, Roman Refrigerators, and More
![Relief block with embracing Tetrarchic emperors, Çukurbağ Archaeological Project [TÜBİTAK 115K242], Kocaeli Archaeology Museum/multispectral or microscopic details : Mark Abbe (Image is Figure 1, within Mark B. Abbe and Tuna Şare Ağtürk 2019)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5eab32e2-944f-42ce-9731-d004ff56f448_2172x1234.png "Relief block with embracing Tetrarchic emperors, Çukurbağ Archaeological Project [TÜBİTAK 115K242], Kocaeli Archaeology Museum/multispectral or microscopic details : Mark Abbe (Image is Figure 1, within Mark B. Abbe and Tuna Şare Ağtürk 2019)")
This week, an overview of recent digital prosopography projects focused on the ancient world. Then, a new platform allows students in China and beyond to learn Latin, an ancient “refrigerator” is discovered in a Roman fortress, Paul Veyne is remembered, new ancient world journal issues, and much more.
Digital Prosopography, Names, and Ancient Lives by Sarah E. Bond
Prosopography is a complex name for a simple concept: the study of people and their connections. Within digital humanities focused on the ancient Mediterranean, a number of projects have attempted to digitize and update older corpora, many of which focused on Greek and Roman elites when formed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, new digital methods are being forged aimed at recovering non-elites within the ancient world. A pivotal project has been Trismegistos and their People feature. Focused on thousands of papyri, inscriptions, ostraca, and other written evidence from Egypt, “Trismegistos People is a tool dealing with personal names of non-royal individuals living in Egypt in documentary texts between BC 800 and AD 800 including all languages and scripts written on any surface. Not included are pharaohs, emperors, and saints.” Additionally, their new portal—Names in the Ancient World—while not a prosopography per se, provides records and visibility for 148, 240 ancient names and their variants from across the Mediterranean.
If you are interested in other current digital prosopographical endeavors focused on the Mediterranean, the Digital Classicist Wiki has a list of ongoing digital humanities projects. There are widely known publications, such as the Prosopographia Imperii Romani (PIR), the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN), and the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire to draw on. But there are also newer prosopographical undertakings such as SNAP:DRGN—a virtual authority list for ancient people through Linked Open Data—and the Digital Prosopography of the Roman Republic (DPRR). Additionally, researchers are now using network analysis to visualize older datasets, such as the Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. There is also the new China Biographical Database (CBD), an open access database of 521,442 individuals noted from the 7th century CE to the 19th century in China.
This is but a small sample of digital tools bringing visibility to both the elites and non-elites of the ancient world. Surveying the landscape of digital prosopographical tools of the last decade, one might (as the great Werner Eck suggested) reflect on Syme’s hortatory remark that, “One uses what one has and there is work to be done.” The open linking of epigraphic, papyrological, and literary data for ancient people within the digital sphere is, I would argue, the future of that “work.”
Public Scholarship and a Global Antiquity Online
Johns Hopkins Classics undergraduate Marie Wei created and maintains a site for Chinese students to come together and learn about Latin and the ancient world. Lingua Latina is a classics culture sharing platform which can help students with everything from the subjunctive to AP Latin to Greek Civilization. It has created a growing community of students in China and around the world who wish to learn about and to share their love of Greco-Roman antiquity. Scan the QR code for more.
At the Roman fortress at Novae in Bulgaria, Polish and Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a Roman “refrigerator” in the barracks that kept food cold. Charcoal, a ceramic bowl, and bone fragments in the fridge support the idea this space was used to chill foods. The story was first reported by the Polish Press Agency (PPA).
Over at the New Books Network, Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar discusses sexual trafficking in the Bible on the NBN podcast, alongside chatting about her new book.
“Trafficking Hadassah: An Africana Reading of Collective Trauma, Memory, and Identity in the Book of Esther and the African Diaspora” is a dialogical cultural study of sexual trafficking in the book of Esther and during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. [Dunbar] assesses sexual trafficking in both contexts, evaluates the traumatic impact of trafficking on Africana collective identity, and examines and critiques ideologies and stereotypes that were espoused to justify sexual abuse against Africana girls and women.
On the Peopling the Past blog, Classics graduate student Jermaine Bryant discusses his current dissertation research. He also notes his work on Hanif Abdurraqib and Leopold Senghor.
I am writing a dissertation on Roman trauma in the literature following the Triumviral civil wars. I am interested in how societies come apart and come back together, and I take as my starting point the fact that many of the authors writing during and after the civil wars have to reckon with an overwhelming legacy of violence. Do they center it? Do they talk around it? How do they talk about themselves as victims of or witnesses to it? A lot of people have worked on cultural memory and the civil wars, but I am trying to see what we can gain from trying to understand the impact as a great social trauma.
Cocoa wasn’t just imbibed by the Maya elite, a new study says. Anabel Ford, Ann Williams, and Mattanjah S. de Vries discuss it in their new PNAS article, “New light on the use of Theobroma cacao by Late Classic Maya.” Cocoa for all!
In Memoriam: Paul Veyne (1930-2022)
The influential and innovative ancient historian and emeritus Professor at the Collège de France, Paul Veyne, passed away on September 29th. On twitter, professors, John Ma @Nakhthor and Carlos Noreña @carlosfnorena provide appreciations of his legacy.
Finally, Yom Kippur was Tuesday to Wednesday night. A belated G'mar chatimah tovah!
Lectures, Conferences, and CFPs for a Global Antiquity
The International Association for Archaeological Research in Western and Central Asia (ARWA) has a fantastic docket of online zoom talks coming up, discussing everything Ammonite Sculptures to Armenian “dragon stones” (Վիշապաքար). You can join these live at 4 pm CET on Zoom or stream live via their YouTube channel.
The Oxford University Ancient Medicine Seminar is an interdisciplinary research seminar that examines disease and medicine in the ancient world. These seminars are remote and can be attended via Zoom. The 2022 Michaelmas Term lineup is below. For further details and to be added to the mailing list, please contact robert.arnott@gtc.ox.ac.uk. On Wednesday, October 19 at 17.30 GMT: Lucie Burešová, “The benefits of a closer look: trace analysis on the La Tène Period and Roman surgical instruments found in Central Europe.”
Registration for ICCG 2022: Global Classics & Africa (December 6-9, 2022) to be held at University of Ghana is open (deadline Oct. 31). Please register here.
New Antiquity Journal Volumes (by @YaleClassicsLib)
‘Atiqot 108 (2022) #openaccess
Classical Review Vol. 72, No. 2 (2022) NB: Christopher Schliephake Subject Profile: “Ecocriticism and Ancient Environments”
Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos Vol. 42 No. 1 (2022) #openaccess
Arheologia No. 3 (2022) #openaccess
Byzantion Nea Hellás No. 41 (2022) #openaccess
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. 16 No. 2 (2022) #openaccess
Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology Vol. 2 (2021–2022) #openaccess Epigraphic Studies
Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 83, No. 4 (2022)
Studies in Late Antiquity Vol. 6., No.3 (2022) NB: Yuliya Minets, “The Tower of Babel and Language Corruption: Approaching Linguistic Disasters in Late Antiquity.”
Journal of Near Eastern Studies Vol. 81, No. 2 (2022) NB: Simcha Gross, “Playing with Persecution: Parallel Jewish and Christian Memories of Late Antiquity in Early Islamic Iraq”
Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI Vol. 4, No. 2 (2022) NB: Maria Sassi “Philosophical Theories of Colour in Ancient Greek Thought – and Their Relevance Today.”
Classical Philology Vol. 117, No. 4 (2022)
Greece and Rome Vol. 69, No.2 (2022)
Syria Vol. 98 (2021) #openaccess L’initiation chrétienne au Proche-Orient
Journal of Social Archaeology Vol. 22, No. 3 (Oct. 2022) NB: Sevil Baltalı Tırpan, “Minding the gap: Attempts at community archaeology and local counter-narratives at an archaeological site in Turkey”
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I would love to add a call for abstracts to a future issue if that's possible! I am not entirely sure where to send it, though.