Facilitating Access to Latin inscriptions in Britain's Oldest Public Museum through Scholarship and Technology

牛津的阿什莫尔博物馆（Ashmolean Museum）拥有大约300件拉丁铭文，这些铭文是自1683年以来经过几个世纪积累起来的。藏品的核心是阿伦德尔大理石，但自17世纪以来，博物馆又进一步收购了一些藏品，最近的一批是已故霍华德·科尔文爵士（Sir Howard Colvin）遗产中的铭文。收藏的主要出版物是钱德勒（1763），其中包括134个题词，当时归博物馆所有。没有现代版本的集合存在。这些碑文的照片记录从未出版过。这些铭文起源于英国和罗马世界的其他地区，可以追溯到共和国晚期到中世纪。这些藏品包括各种类型的铭文：许多是纪念性的铭文，如墓志铭、宗教奉献和纪念建筑的铭文，但更多的是刻在日常物品上的，包括锡器、陶器，甚至是一套排气管。这些铭文本身并没有什么特别的历史意义，但它们结合在一起，可以让我们深入了解罗马世界，了解它的纪念习惯、社会等级、经济网络和读写能力的使用。更具体地说，不列颠边境省份在更广泛的罗马帝国的文化、社会、宗教和经济网络中的地位可以通过在那里发现的铭文来说明。尽管拉丁文铭文提供了与古代世界直接交流的渠道，但对于普通大众来说，它们似乎是难以接近和理解的。该项目旨在为学术读者创建一个在线语料库和博物馆收藏的铭文评论版本，然后将其作为进一步在线资源和互动活动的跳板，并将更多的拉丁铭文纳入博物馆的展示中，以便向尽可能广泛的观众开放这种第一手来源材料。它将展示拉丁铭文如何照亮过去的社会、经济和宗教，并将探索拉丁语在“罗马不列颠”结束后继续在英国使用的方式。除了包含与罗马历史、收藏和博物馆历史相关的研究核心外，该项目还将为更好地理解数字资源如何嵌入由专业学者、学生、教师、学童和博物馆参观者组成的不同环境做出宝贵贡献。AHRC一直走在资助创新数字铭文项目的前沿，如《春药铭文》和《MAMA XI》，并通过电子科学和古代文献项目支持新的成像技术。这些项目已经清楚地展示了以EpiDoc XML出版的优势，但我们希望通过以下几种方式进一步探索这种潜力：通过探索将EpiDoc语料库集成到博物馆的编目系统中；通过探索如何使用它来增强博物馆内的现有展示；通过了解如何使用XML来生成供其他机构使用的教学资源。特别是，它将寻求将EpiDoc的潜力付诸实践，以生产适合视障人士的资源。一些观众将成为这个项目的潜在受益者。参观博物馆的游客将能够更容易地与展出的拉丁文铭文互动；互动活动将针对学童。学校可以在参观博物馆期间使用教育中心的新在线资源，并在参观结束后参与后续活动。学生和学者将能够访问铭文的电子EpiDoc语料库。通过出版电子语料库，博物馆的藏品将向全世界的观众开放，并有可能将其数据整合到现有的主要在线拉丁碑文数据库中。

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford owns around 300 Latin inscriptions, which it has accumulated over the centuries since 1683. The core of the collection consists of the Arundel marbles, but the museum has made further acquisitions since the seventeenth century, most recently of inscriptions from the estate of the late Sir Howard Colvin. The main publication of the collection is that of Chandler (1763), who included the 134 inscriptions then owned by the museum. No modern edition of the collection exists. No photographic record of the inscriptions has ever been published. The inscriptions originate from Britain and other parts of the Roman world and date from the late Republic down to mediaeval times. The collection includes a wide range of types of inscriptions: many are monumental inscriptions such as epitaphs, religious dedications, and commemorative building-inscriptions, but many more are inscribed upon everyday objects, including pewterware, pottery, and even a set of panpipes. None of the inscriptions on its own is of any especial historical consequence, but together they offer insights into the Roman world, its commemorative habits, social hierarchy, economic networks, and uses of literacy. Specifically too, the place of the frontier province of Britain within the cultural, social, religious, and economic networks of the wider Roman empire can be illustrated by the inscriptions found there.Despite the fact that they offer a direct line of communication with the ancient world, Latin inscriptions seem inaccessible and incomprehensible to the general public. This project aims to create an online corpus and critical edition of the museum's collection of inscriptions for a scholarly readership, and then to use this as a springboard for further online resources and interactive activities, and to incorporate more Latin inscriptions into the museum's displays in order to open up this type of first-hand source material to as wide an audience as possible. It will show how Latin inscriptions can illuminate the society, economy, and religion of the past, and will explore the ways in which Latin continued to be used in Britain even after the end of 'Roman Britain'.As well as containing a research core relating to Roman history and to the history of collections and museums, this project will make a valuable contribution to understanding better how digital resources can be embedded into different contexts peopled by professional scholars, students, teachers, schoolchildren, & museum-visitors. The AHRC has been at the forefront of funding innovative digital epigraphic projects, such as Inscriptions of Aphrodisias & MAMA XI, and of supporting new imaging techniques via the project e-Science and Ancient Documents. These projects have clearly demonstrated the advantages of publication in EpiDoc XML, but we wish to explore this potential further in several ways: by exploring the integration of an EpiDoc corpus into a Museum's cataloguing system; by discovering how it can be used to enhance current displays within the Museum; by seeing how the XML can be used to produce teaching resources for use by institutions elsewhere. In particular, it will seek to put into practice the potential in EpiDoc to produce resources suitable for the visually impaired.Several audiences will be the potential beneficiaries of this project. Visitors to the museum will be able to engage more easily with the Latin inscriptions on display; interactive activities will target schoolchildren. Schools will be able to use new online resources in the Education Centre during their visits to the museum and to engage in follow-up activities afterwards. Students and scholars will be able to access the electronic EpiDoc corpus of the inscriptions. By publishing an electronic corpus, the museum's collection will be made accessible to a worldwide audience, and it will be possible to integrate its data into the existing major online databases of Latin inscriptions.