Call for papers out for panel "The Future of Digital Epigraphic Corpora: Opportunities and Challenges" at the 2027 Epigraphic Congress in Bologna.

https://currentepigraphy.org/2026/06/22/cfp-the-future-of-digital-epigraphic-corpora-opportunities-and-challenges-bologna-aug-sept-2027/

What a long way we've come from Barcelona in 2002. #epigraphy #epidoc

boosts appreciated

Bodard, Gabriel. “Report on LP11 Activity: Epigraphic Data in Wikidata.” The Stoa: A Review for Digital Classics, May 5, 2026. https://blog.stoa.org/archives/4398.

> This session aimed to introduce and explore the use of #Wikidata, a collaborative knowledge base, for #epigraphy, providing both theoretical knowledge on #LinkedOpenData (#LOD) and ontologies, and practical skills for entering, querying, and managing epigraphic inscriptions.

Now, after the day's first #MATW2026 coffee pause, we have Moritz Hinsch (LMU): "Letters to the Gods? The Materiality of Writing Oracles" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#hinsch In which he considers the materiality of the lead oracle tablets from Dodona for what they reveal about literacy, writing, and religious belief

#ancientGeography #ancientReligion #archaeology #classics #epigraphy

Michael Hahn (LMU) takes the podium at #MATW2026 with "Empire and individual on sherds of clay": https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#hahn

> The paper investigates the eastern desert between the Nile and the Red Sea in the Roman Imperial era as a laboratory for examining the relationship between empire and individual through the materiality of writing. Its central evidence consists of inscribed ostraca, mostly recovered from Roman military forts, quarries, and desert waystations.

#ancientHistory #ancientGeography #archaeology #classics #RomanEmpire #ancientWriting #ostraka #epigraphy #papyrology

Rounding out the first afternoon panel at #MATW2026 is #ISAWNYU faculty member Antonis Kotsonas: "Inscribed Armor, Personhood, and the Materiality of Writing in Archaic Crete" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#kotsonas . He's using for a case study a corpus of armor pieces (both inscribed and uninscribed), that were illegally excavated and dispersed in the mid 20th century from Afrati in Crete.

#ancientHistory #archaeology #ancientWarfare #epigraphy

And now at #MATW2026 we've heard from #ISAWNYU doctoral student Christina Stefanou on the topic "Re-materializing the Alphabet: Embodied and Material Entanglements in Phrygian Writing Practice(s)": https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#stefanou

#ancientHistory #archaeology #epigraphy #Phrygians #ancientWriting

At #MATW2026 we've just heard #ISAWNYU doctoral student Manolis Mavromatis present a paper entitled "Materiality of Writing in Post-Hittite Syro-Anatolia: A Quantitative Analysis of Monumental Inscribed Objects": https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#mavromatis

#ancientHistory #archaeology #Hittites #epigraphy

Now at #MATW2026 it's #ISAWNYU PhD student Yu Song delivering a paper entitled "Writing on the Body: Inscriptions on the Early Dynastic Mesopotamian Statues" : https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#song

#ancientHistory #ancientArtHistory #archaeology #ancientMesopotamia #epigraphy