Irene Rossi | Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) (original) (raw)

Papers by Irene Rossi

in C.G. Cereti (ed.), Egitto e Vicino Oriente Antichi: Tra Passato e Futuro. Atti del terzo convegno, Roma 30 Giugno – 1 Luglio 2022 (=Scienze dell’Antichità 29.3), Rome pp. 13-22 , 2023

Archeologia e calcolatori, 2021

Open Science best practices and policies have been increasingly promoted and adopted in Europe a... more Open Science best practices and policies have been increasingly promoted and adopted in Europe and worldwide to extend public availability of research data and publications, according to FAIR principles. In this context, the so-called ‘Diamond Open Access’ model is particularly relevant since it entails provision of scientific content entirely free of charge, both for authors and readers. The journal Archeologia e Calcolatori adopted this model at a very early stage, when - in 2005 - it started publishing online full-text PDFs and metadata of its articles according to recognised standards, as an Open Archives Initiative data provider. This paper addresses the evolution of ‘Archeologia e Calcolatori’ in the context of scientific publishing in the disciplinary domain of IT applications to archaeology. It focuses on the updates of its OAI-PMH repository, which led to the journal’s inclusion in OpenAIRE as a data provider, and on mapping its current position in the OA Diamond landscape. The paper also illustrates recent implementations of Archeologia e Calcolatori’s website to provide full access to visual and interactive resources, such as images and 3D models, related to its publications, and to relevant metadata, structured according to OpenAIRE’s most recent guidelines. The combined, contextual provision of full texts, visual and interactive resources, and structured metadata – including full annotations and relations turns out to be a pioneering publishingservice in the domain of IT applications to archaeology.

ArcheoFOSS XIV 2020: Open Software, Hardware, Processes, Data and Formats in Archaeological Research, 2021

The Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Science research group at the CNR-ISPC, including archaeologi... more The Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Science research group at the CNR-ISPC, including archaeologists, philologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists who share editorial work around the open-access journal Archeologia e Calcolatori, has addressed most of its activities to monitoring and studying the use of digital data collections, and open-access policies in the humanities field. The paper illustrates some recent works, with a focus on the adhesion of Archeologia e Calcolatori to the FAIR principles and on the Linked Data annotation of the journal's texts.

Umanistica Digitale, 2021

Annotated corpora, provided that they adopt international standards and expose data in open forma... more Annotated corpora, provided that they adopt international standards and expose data in open format, have many more chances to be easily exploited and reused for different objectives than traditional, analogue corpora. This paper aims at presenting the results of the early adhesion to best practices and principles afterward codified as Open Science and FAIR principles in the frame of projects concerned with digital textual corpora, in a niche area of research such as the pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphy. The case study analysed in this paper is the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions – DASI, an online annotated corpus of the textual sources from Ancient Arabia, which also exposes its records in standard formats (oai_dc, EpiDoc, EDM) in an OAI-PMH repository. The initiatives of reuse of DASI open data in the frame of the recently ANR-funded project Maparabia (CNRS-CNR) are discussed in the paper, focusing on the exploitation of DASI’s onomastic and geographic data in a new reference tool, the Gazetteer of Ancient Arabia. After introducing DASI and Maparabia projects and highlighting the objectives of the Gazetteer, the paper describes the conceptual model of its database and the module importing data from DASI. The population of the Gazetteer, implying also a data entry and manipulation phase, is exemplified by the case-study of the Ancient South Arabian place ‘Barāqish/Yathill’. Based on the above experience, limitations and opportunities of data reuse and synchronisation issues between systems are discussed.

The IASA Bulletin, 2021

Based on archaeological data and large epigraphic corpuses (DASI, OCIANA), the project aims to de... more Based on archaeological data and large epigraphic corpuses (DASI, OCIANA), the project aims to develop 3 online research instruments, adhering to Open Science and FAIR principles.
1/ Digital atlas of ancient Arabia
2/ Gazetteer of ancient Arabia
3/ Thematic Dictionary of Ancient Arabia

Archeologia e Calcolatori 31.2, 2020

An epigraph is a complex historical document, whose significance is fully acknowledged only if it... more An epigraph is a complex historical document, whose significance is fully acknowledged only if its textual features (script, language, content, etc.) are studied in combination with the contextual information (on the textual support and its provenance). This is the reason why digital epigraphy lies at the crossroads of different disciplines applying ITs to textual and material sources, such as digital philology, computational linguistics, and computational archaeology. The specific interests and methods of those disciplines have exerted an influence on digital epigraphy, which is apparent in the documentary vs statistical approaches applied over time to the electronic treatment of the (re)source ‘inscription’. The aim of the paper is to trace those trends in the application of qualitative vs quantitative methods in the history of studies of digital epigraphy, highlighting the main moments of change, until the most recent developments.

8th Annual Conference AIUCD 2019. Udine, 23 - 25 gennaio 2019. Book of Abstracts. Teaching and research in Digital Humanities' era, 2019

The paper aims to contribute to the discussion of the challenges, impact and prospects of digital... more The paper aims to contribute to the discussion of the challenges, impact and prospects of digital initiatives engaged with "young" and "niche" sectors of research, through the experience of DASI - Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions. Formerly an ERC-funded project at the University of Pisa in partnership with Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, DASI is now maintained thanks to the cooperation between the University of Pisa and the CNR. The objective of DASI is to foster the study of the enormous epigraphic heritage of pre-Islamic Arabia, which spans from the beginning of the I mill. BCE to VI cent. CE. Attesting different Semitic languages and scripts, epigraphs are the only textual sources for the study of Ancient Arabia. Relevant Digital Humanities theoretical and methodological challenges encountered during the course of the project (e.g. issues of choices in data modelling in relation to the complex nature of the epigraphic source, of harmonization of definitions for "marginal epigraphies", of applying language technologies to under-resourced languages' corpora, of using the electronic resources for didactic aims) are discussed, in relation to the description of DASI's digital tools for archiving, curated edition, online fruition, and cultural and linguistic research. Finally, the research prospects of the project, in terms of widening contents, updating technologies and disseminating results, are considered against issues such as the sustainability of short-term funded projects, and of the evaluation of digital, "non-traditional" outputs and publications in academic careers.

The four new inscriptions published here (Kamna 30 A, B, 31, 32 and 33), which come from illegal ... more The four new inscriptions published here (Kamna 30 A, B, 31, 32 and 33), which come from illegal excavations and belong to a Yemeni private collection, shed new light on the relationship between the kingdom of Sabaʾ and the city-states of the Jawf. They provide new synchronisms between the kings of Sabaʾ and those of Kamna, allowing the proposal of a more precise chronology of the city-states of the Jawf for the second half of the eighth century and the early seventh century BC.

Archeo, 2019

Elencati nel libro della Genesi come figli del fratellastro di Isacco, gli Arabi sono coinvolti i... more Elencati nel libro della Genesi come figli del fratellastro di Isacco, gli Arabi sono coinvolti in numerose vicende narrate nella Bibbia: dall'episodio di Giuseppe, figlio di Giacobbe, venduto dai fratelli invidiosi ai mercanti provenienti dalla terra di Madian, all'incontro, straordinario e simbolico, tra Salomone e la regina di Saba. Sono racconti ispirati a una terra che, sin dagli inizi del I millennio a.C., fece da scenario a commerci e mercati tra i piú dinamici del mondo antico.

Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2019

Based on the case study of the journal «Archeologia e Calcolatori», the authors investigate speci... more Based on the case study of the journal «Archeologia e Calcolatori», the authors investigate specific issues related to the promotion of Open Science in archaeology. The first part analyses the initiatives undertaken in order to foster the dissemination of the journal’s digital
resources on the web, such as the use of descriptive metadata (Dublin Core), the attribution of unique identifiers (DOI), the uploading of the full texts on institutional repositories for longterm preservation (CNR-SOLAR), the collaboration with initiatives aiming at the aggregation
of cultural and scientific digital contents (MiBACT-CulturaItalia). The second part illustrates many initiatives and projects promoted by the editorial committee to spread the principles of the “open access” philosophy, nationally and internationally. The journal has thus become a
record and memory of the progress in the theoretical, as well as applied, aspects of the Open Access movement. This study shows the relevance of the continuous experimentation of the practices for publishing scientific initiatives, adhering to and promoting the Open Access and
facilitating the accessibility to its own resources.

Laila Nehmé et al., Report on the 2017 Season of the Madâ’in Sâlih Archaeological Project, 2018

During the 2017 excavation season in ancient Hegra (Madâ’in Sâlih, Saudi Arabia), a short fragmen... more During the 2017 excavation season in ancient Hegra (Madâ’in Sâlih, Saudi Arabia), a short fragmentary text in Ancient South Arabian (ASA) musnad characters was brought to light, inscribed on a stone block reused in a wall of the Roman fort. The text mentions the theonym ʿzyn (al-ʿUzzā, according to the ASA spelling). Its script and phraseology have close comparisons with the monumental inscriptions from Qaryat al-Fāw and may therefore provide direct proof of the presence in ancient Hegra of at least one individual from one of the communities composing Qaryat al-Fāw’s society, like the ʾl ʾḥnkt.

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

Index of the volume: De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital E... more Index of the volume: De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018. The index groups terms by: Ancient and Modern Regions and States; Languages and Scripts; Concepts of the epigraphic discipline and related digital practice.

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

The present section contains selected terms from the Index of Concepts of the volume: De Santis, ... more The present section contains selected terms from the Index of Concepts of the volume: De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018. Terms are mapped to the Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus for their disambiguation and definition.

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

This webliography includes a selection of the online resources that have been referenced within t... more This webliography includes a selection of the online resources that have been referenced within the papers of the book: De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018.
Among them, only those useful to approach digital epigraphy, in content and method, have been selected. Each resource is described through the core elements of the Dublin Core Matadata Initiative. Therefore, especially indications on subjects, and chronological and geographic coverage are general, not domain-specific.

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

Conclusions of the volume

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

The paper describes the main challenges faced and the solutions adopted in the frame of the proje... more The paper describes the main challenges faced and the solutions adopted in the frame of the project DASI – Digital archive for the study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions. In particular, it discusses the methodological and technological issues that emerged during the conversion from the CSAI – Corpus of South Arabian inscriptions project (a domain-specific, text-based, digital edition conceived at the end of 1990s) to the wider DASI archive for the study of inscriptions in different languages and scripts of ancient Arabia. The paper devotes special attention to: the modelling of data and encoding (XML annotation vs database approach; the conceptual model for the valorisation of the material aspect of the epigraph; the textual encoding for critical editions); interoperability (pros and cons of compliance to standards; harmonization of metadata; openness; semantic interoperability); lexicography (tools for underresourced languages; translations), with a view to possibly fostering reasoning on best practices in the community of digital epigraphers beyond each specific cultural/linguistic domain.

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

Introduction to the volume.

Proceedings of the 2015 Digital Heritage International Congress. Vol. 2, Analysis & Interpretation, Theory, Preservation & Standards, Digital Heritage Projects & Applications, 2015

The ERC project DASI is aimed at digitizing the overall epigraphic heritage of the ancient Arabia... more The ERC project DASI is aimed at digitizing the overall epigraphic heritage of the ancient Arabian peninsula, in order to enhance knowledge of the pre-Islamic Arabian languages and cultures. This paper describes the challenges faced and the solutions proposed in the construction of a digital lexicon tool for under-resources languages such as those attested in the epigraphic documentation of pre-Islamic Arabia.

Off the Beaten Track. Epigraphy at the Borders. Proceedings of the VI EAGLE International Meeting (24-25 September 2015, Bari, Italy), 2016

The ERC-Advanced Grant project DASI has contributed to define and foster best practices in the d... more The ERC-Advanced Grant project DASI has contributed to define and foster best practices in the digitization of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions. As one of the early attempts at digitizing the epigraphic heritage related to Semitic languages, it has been facing specific challenges. This contribute focuses on challenges and solutions chosen to describe epigraphs and encode and represent their texts, according to standards. Moreover, a digital lexicon tool for linguistic study of under-resources languages is illustrated.

in C.G. Cereti (ed.), Egitto e Vicino Oriente Antichi: Tra Passato e Futuro. Atti del terzo convegno, Roma 30 Giugno – 1 Luglio 2022 (=Scienze dell’Antichità 29.3), Rome pp. 13-22 , 2023

Archeologia e calcolatori, 2021

ArcheoFOSS XIV 2020: Open Software, Hardware, Processes, Data and Formats in Archaeological Research, 2021

Umanistica Digitale, 2021

The IASA Bulletin, 2021

Archeologia e Calcolatori 31.2, 2020

8th Annual Conference AIUCD 2019. Udine, 23 - 25 gennaio 2019. Book of Abstracts. Teaching and research in Digital Humanities' era, 2019

Archeo, 2019

Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2019

Laila Nehmé et al., Report on the 2017 Season of the Madâ’in Sâlih Archaeological Project, 2018

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

Conclusions of the volume

De Santis, Annamaria & Rossi, Irene (Eds), Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy. From Practice to Discipline, Warsaw-Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2018

Introduction to the volume.

Proceedings of the 2015 Digital Heritage International Congress. Vol. 2, Analysis & Interpretation, Theory, Preservation & Standards, Digital Heritage Projects & Applications, 2015

Off the Beaten Track. Epigraphy at the Borders. Proceedings of the VI EAGLE International Meeting (24-25 September 2015, Bari, Italy), 2016

by Julian Bogdani, Fabiana Battistin, Giancarlo Pastura, Matteo Serpetti, Gabriele Ciccone, Domizia D'Erasmo, Filippo Diara, Lorenzo Fornaciari, Giovanni Caratelli, Cecilia Giorgi, Pellegrino Michele, Paolo Rosati, Alessandra Piergrossi, Irene Rossi, Andrea D'Andrea, Francesca Anichini, Piergiovanna Grossi, Marco Ciurcina, Marianna Figuera, Frederic Auth, Riccardo Montalbano, Ascanio D'Andrea, Emanuel Demetrescu, Timo Homburg, Daniele Santamaria, and Livia Tirabassi

The book of abstracts of ArcheoFOSS International Conference, 14th edition 2020. The conference w... more The book of abstracts of ArcheoFOSS International Conference, 14th edition 2020.
The conference will be held on October 15-17, in the World Wide Web. More information is available at https://2020.archeofoss.org

Although a relevant number of projects digitizing inscriptions are under development or have been... more Although a relevant number of projects digitizing inscriptions are under development or have been recently accomplished, Digital Epigraphy is not yet considered to be a proper discipline. Digital epigraphists train on the field, create networks, but and there are still no regular occasions to meet and discuss. By collecting contributions on nineteen projects – very diversified for geographic and chronological context, for script and language, and for typology of digital output – this volume intends to point out the methodological issues which are specific to the application of information technologies to epigraphy.
The first part of the volume is focused on data modelling and encoding, which are conditioned by the specific features of different scripts and languages, and deeply influence the possibility to perform searches on texts, and the approach to the lexicographic study of such under-resourced languages. The second part of the volume is dedicated to the initiatives aimed at fostering aggregation, dissemination and the reuse of epigraphic materials, and to discuss issues of interoperability. The common theme of the volume is the relationship between the compliance with the theoretic tools and the methodologies developed by each different tradition of studies, and, on the other side, the necessity of adopting a common framework in order to produce commensurable and shareable results. The final question is whether the computational approach is changing the way epigraphy is studied, to the extent of renovating the discipline on the basis of new, unexplored questions.

The most consistent Italian collection of South Arabian inscriptions and artifacts is held in Rom... more The most consistent Italian collection of South Arabian inscriptions and artifacts is held in Rome in the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale (MNAO). It is composed by nearly 40 epigraphic and 60 an-epigraphic objects, arrived from Yemen since the 1930s. The catalogue proposes thematic paths through some of the most significant pieces of the collection, guiding the reader in the comprehension of the Ancient South Arabian culture.
The catalogue was published in the frame of the project MEDINA - “Mediterranean network for the valorization and fruition of in¬scriptions preserved in museums” [http://www.medinaproject-epigraphy.eu/]. It was funded to the University of Pisa in partnership with Gaia Heritage, Yarmouk University, the University of Barcelona and MagoProduction by the European Union with the ENPI - CBC Med programme in 2012

Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2018

Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati al secondo - e ultimo - convegno internazionale del p... more Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati al secondo - e ultimo - convegno internazionale del progetto EAGLE "Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy", tenutosi dal 27 al 29 gennaio del 2016 alla Sapienza Università di Roma.

Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2019

The Arabian Peninsula is still poorly represented in maps and digital reference tools on the geog... more The Arabian Peninsula is still poorly represented in maps and digital reference tools on the geography of the ancient world. To respond to this need, a Gazetteer of Ancient Arabia has been conceived in the frame of the recently funded ANR-project MAPARABIA.
The Gazetteer is synchronised with DASI, the “Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions” [http://dasi.cnr.it/], from which it currently draws thousands of names of entities related to the territory, which are encoded in the Southern Arabian inscriptions, and hundreds of records of archaeological sites and monuments.
As a thesaurus of ancient “places”, the gazetteer identifies, disambiguates, and describes them, and represents their environmental and semantic relations, as well as their changes over time.
It will be released in linked data format and under open license (LOD), in order to enhance interoperability with other repositories.

DASI is a project directed by Alessandra Avanzini of the University of Pisa, which has been funde... more DASI is a project directed by Alessandra Avanzini of the University of Pisa, which has been funded by the European Community within the Seventh Framework Programme “Ideas”, Specific Programme “ERC – Advanced Grant”.
DASI seeks to gather all known pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphic material into a comprehensive online database, with the aim to make available to specialists and to the broader public a wide array of documents often underestimated because of their difficulty of access.

MEDINA is a Mediterranean network funded by the European Union within the ENPI - CBCMed (European... more MEDINA is a Mediterranean network funded by the European Union within the ENPI - CBCMed (European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument - Cross-Border Cooperation in the Mediterranean Sea Basin) programme.
The main objective of MEDINA is to enhance awareness, both in the local and in the international community, of the often unjustly neglected Ancient Near East cultural heritage, as a necessary step for its future preservation.
In this view, three relevant archaeological and epigraphic collections related to the Phoenician, the Nabataean and the South-Arabian civilizations have been catalogued. They are presently preserved into the National Museum of Beirut, the Museum of Jordanian Heritage of the Yarmouk University and the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale “Giuseppe Tucci” in Rome.

The aim of this research is to define the history and the culture of the most ancient phase (the ... more The aim of this research is to define the history and the culture of the most ancient phase (the so-called “Madhābaean” period) of the Ancient South Arabian civilization in the Jawf valley (northern Yemen) through the analysis of its monumental epigraphic documentation.
In the first half of the I millennium BC, this region is characterized by the flourishing of five small city-states (Nashshān, Ma‘īn, Haram, Kamna and Inabba’), a peculiar political organization in respect to the major kingdoms that were assessing their sphere influence on Southern Arabia at that time.
Through the study of the 264 inscription which have been identified as the documentation of the five city-states, it has been possible to reconstruct their history, defining the chronological limits of this “ancient period” from at least the end of the 9th to the beginning of the 6th century BC, when the kingdom of Ma‘īn succeeded in establishing a new geo-political asset of the region.
The complete edition of this corpus of texts – with relevant information, transcription, translation and commentary provided – has also allowed to draw a picture of the “Madhābaean” culture, in its religious, social and textual-linguistic features.

Il presente lavoro si occupa della riedizione critica del corpus delle iscrizioni di espiazione p... more Il presente lavoro si occupa della riedizione critica del corpus delle iscrizioni di espiazione provenienti dalla regione sudarabica del Jawf (in particolare dai siti di Shaqab al-Manassa, Kamna, Baraqish, Darb as-Sabi, Haram e dallo wadi Shudayf). La ricerca, oltre a dedicarsi allo ...

DASI – Digital Archive for the study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions is a 2011-2016 ERC proje... more DASI – Digital Archive for the study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions is a 2011-2016 ERC project of the University of Pisa in collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, aiming at getting the whole corpus of pre-Islamic inscriptions from the Arabian Peninsula inventoried and digitized, in order to strengthen knowledge of the civilizations of Ancient Arabia, enhance the study of their languages, and foster a methodological debate on the preservation of their epigraphic heritage.
The inscriptions are digitized by means of a hybrid system, which matches the advantages of xml (Epidoc) for the encoding of texts and of a database with its web-based data entry system to record metadata. DASI online archive, which counts 8,000 published inscriptions, is an aggregator of the three main epigraphic corpora attested for Ancient Arabia: those for Ancient South Arabian, Ancient North Arabian, and Aramaic. A tool for grammatical and lexical mark-up was also set up in order to facilitate the study of such under-resourced languages.
In this second year after the end of the ERC grant, the DASI project’s efforts are mainly aimed at ensuring the sustainability and constant improvement of its archive, at enhancing its aggregator functions and at pursuing established lines of research, both in the fields of pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphy and of digital epigraphy. A gazetteer is being implemented for a full exploitation of DASI epigraphic textual data and metadata.
In this paper, ongoing activities and future plans at DASI will be analysed in detail, together with the main challenges that the project has been facing since its beginning – both those shared with other digital epigraphy projects and those related to the specific documentation dealt with by DASI – which may further methodological debate and networking.

Presented to the Rencontres Sabéennes 21, Toulouse, June 8-10 2017

A. Avanzini, A. De Santis, M. Gallo, D. Marotta, I. Rossi Digital Heritage 2015 (Granada, 28th Se... more A. Avanzini, A. De Santis, M. Gallo, D. Marotta, I. Rossi
Digital Heritage 2015 (Granada, 28th September-2nd October 2015).
The ERC project DASI is aimed at digitizing the overall epigraphic heritage of the ancient Arabian peninsula, in order to enhance knowledge of the pre-Islamic Arabian languages and cultures. This paper describes the challenges faced and the solutions proposed in the construction of a digital lexicon tool for under-resources languages such as those attested in the epigraphic documentation of pre-Islamic Arabia.

A. De Santis, I. Rossi 6th EAGLE International Event "Off the beaten track. Epigraphy at the bord... more A. De Santis, I. Rossi
6th EAGLE International Event "Off the beaten track. Epigraphy at the borders
(Bari - Italy, September 24th to 25th, 2015).
The ERC-Advanced Grant project DASI has contributed to define and foster best practices
in the digitization of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions. As one of the early attempts at digitizing the epigraphic heritage related to Semitic languages, it has been facing specific challenges. This contribute focuses on challenges and solutions chosen to describe epigraphs and encode and represent their texts, according to standards. Moreover, a digital lexicon tool for linguistic study of under-resources languages is illustrated.

D. Marotta, I. Rossi Rencontres Sabéennes 19, University of Pisa (June 18-20, 2015). The challeng... more D. Marotta, I. Rossi
Rencontres Sabéennes 19, University of Pisa (June 18-20, 2015).
The challenges faced in the computational treatment of the Semitic languages are well-known and only partially resolved. They are even more complex when under-resourced languages are concerned, as those attested in the epigraphic heritage of ancient Arabia. Indeed, it is the study of these languages that can profit from a computational approach.
At the fourth year since its funding from the ERC, the project DASI– Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscription has directed its efforts towards the enhancement of linguistic research, starting from those corpora of texts whose digitization is completed in the archive and whose linguistic features still deserve to be fully appreciated (Hadramitic, Minaic and Qatabanic). A tool has been created for the semantic and morphological annotation of the lexical items recorded in DASI. The paper describes the architecture and the functioning of this tool, with examples of the workflow.

The paper presents a textual typology of the Ancient South Arabian epigraphic heritage: the expia... more The paper presents a textual typology of the Ancient South Arabian epigraphic heritage: the expiatory inscriptions of the al-Jawf region. Through a revision of the history of studies on this texts, the paper analyses their peculiarities with respect to the dedicatory inscriptions of penitential subject coming from the Sabaean and Hadramitic cultural area. In particular, the paper focuses on the interpretation of the most ancient expiatory inscriptions by the king and the community of Ma'in, which can be dated to the VII cent. BC (Université Catholique de Louvain - Institut orientaliste de Louvain, Chaire Ryckmans d’études arabiques anciennes, 23-3-2015).

The ERC five-year project "DASI – Digital Archive for the study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptio... more The ERC five-year project "DASI – Digital Archive for the study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions" (University of Pisa-Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) aims at digitizing the whole corpus of ancient Arabian inscriptions.
DASI archive of inscriptions, which counts at present nearly 6500 published text, consists of three main components: a relational database, a data entry and a front end. The features of these, described in the paper, make DASI a performing tool not only for cataloguing and publishing epigraphs but also for teaching the culture and the languages of pre-Islamic Arabia.
These tools are used in the course of Ancient South Arabian Epigraphy at the University of Pisa. The students are guided in a thorough analysis of an inscription by means of the data entry. Special attention is paid to the text, where a linguistic analysis can be performed by means of grammatical tags. The XML textual editor integrated into the data entry is easy-to-use, as it allows to obtain a text encoded according to the EpiDoc standard without the user being forced to learn the XML syntax.

Avanzini A., De Santis A., Marotta D., Rossi I. DASI is an ERC-Advanced Grant project aimed at di... more Avanzini A., De Santis A., Marotta D., Rossi I.
DASI is an ERC-Advanced Grant project aimed at digitizing the pre-Islamic inscriptions from Arabia and fostering best practices for the digitiza-tion of the epigraphic heritage related to Semitic languages. This paper de-scribes the content model, the standards chosen, and exemplifies the vocabu-laries in view of a possible harmonization of data pertaining to the specific domain. The architecture of the system and the tools for encoding and retrieving textual content are also illustrated.

DASI is a University of Pisa five-year project funded by the European Community within the 7th Fr... more DASI is a University of Pisa five-year project funded by the European Community within the 7th Framework Programme “Ideas”, “ERC – Advanced Grant”. Started in May 2011, DASI seeks to gather all known pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphic material into a comprehensive online database which can be accessed by scholars from anywhere in the world, with the aim of promoting the study of the Arabian Peninsula through its immense epigraphic documentation.
DASI project is carrying out a wide range of activities in order to promote the study of pre-Islamic Arabia through innovative IT means, preserving its textual heritage, making it available to everyone, disseminating the results and promoting the interaction among scholars and institution of many countries (up to now Italy, UK, France, Spain, Austria, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, USA).

Towards the second half of the 1st millennium BC the South Arabian kingdom of Ma‘īn established i... more Towards the second half of the 1st millennium BC the South Arabian kingdom of Ma‘īn established itself as the leader in the trans-Arabian incense trade, a flourishing economic activity whose significant historical and cultural implications still deserve to be fully appreciated.
A recent overall reconsideration of the Minaic corpus has allowed to make the point on the epigraphic documentation left by the Minaeans beyond their kingdoms’ borders in the Jawf valley, i.e. in Najran, Qaryat al-Fāw, al-‘Ulā and Madā’in Ṣāliḥ (modern Saudi Arabia), in Egypt, in the island of Delos and also in other South Arabian regions.
In this paper we analyse the textual features of this documentation from different perspectives (language, script and support of the texts) on the basis of the comparison, on one hand, with the foreign cultural environment where these inscriptions originated and, on the other hand, with the background of the documentation from the motherland.
The aim is to draw some cultural reflections on such a unique corpus of epigraphs starting from highlighting its linguistic peculiarities, with special attention to the reconstruction of its historical frame.

"In the second half of the 1st millennium BC, the South Arabian kingdom of Ma‘īn was engaged in i... more "In the second half of the 1st millennium BC, the South Arabian kingdom of Ma‘īn was engaged in international trade, with its caravans crossing Arabia. Alongside a considerable number of texts from the Minaean homeland hinting at this commercial activity abroad, a number of Minaic inscriptions and graffiti was left outside South Arabia, being the direct proof of the presence of Minaean traders in different parts of the Near East.
The largest number of inscriptions has been found in the oasis of al-‘Ulā, modern Saudi Arabia, where the kingdom of Ma‘īn established a crucial outpost for its trading activities.The paper will present the results of the overall study of this corpus, which has allowed a better reading and interpretation of some texts and the possibility of an analysis of the relationship between the political, cultural and linguistic world of which these texts are expression and their North Arabian milieu.
In the light of the latest hypothesis regarding the Minaean chronology and the recent studies on the Dadanitic sources, special attention will be devoted to the historical frame of this documentation, to its textual features – script and language – and to the significance of monumental inscriptions as a means of assessment of one’s own identity in a “foreign” context."

Il Seminar for Arabian Studies è la sola conferenza internazionale che si riunisce annualmente al... more Il Seminar for Arabian Studies è la sola conferenza internazionale che si riunisce annualmente al fine di presentare le più aggiornate ricerche nel settore degli studi umanistici sulla penisola arabica, dall’antichità ai nostri giorni.
Dettagli sulla partecipazione alla conferenza sono disponibili all’indirizzo: www.theiasa.com/2020-seminar/
La scadenza per la sottomissione degli abstract è il 28 febbraio 2020.

The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the only international forum that meets annually for the prese... more The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the only international forum that meets annually for the presentation of the latest academic research in the humanities on the Arabian Peninsula. If you wish to offer a paper, see information available at: https://www.theiasa.com/2020-seminar/ (CfP closes on the 28th of February 2020).

Arabian Epigraphic Notes (ISSN: 2451-8875) is a journal of the Leiden Center for the Study of Anc... more Arabian Epigraphic Notes (ISSN: 2451-8875) is a journal of the Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia. It is dedicated to the publication of epigraphy from Arabia and the discussion of relevant historical and linguistic issues.

by Fabien Lesguer, Bigot-Démereau Louise, Paul Cervantes, Chloé Girardi, Brahim M'Barek, Julie Monchamp, Ali Othman, Sasha Peignot, Alexia Rosak, Irene Rossi, Shadi SHABO, and Francelin Tourtet