Religious epigraphy in the digital Lexicon LARES
Abstract
The poster will present one of the results of the LARES Project (Language and Religion: Lexical Change and Variation in Religious Enculturation / Acculturation phenomena on the Ancient World), a research project funded by the action Seed Funding of the UNA-Europa Network, coordinated by the University of Bologna and built on a partnership which sees the collaboration of other European Universities (Helsingin Yliopisto, Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie, Universidad Complutense de Madrid). The aim of the project is to enfoster interdisciplinary approaches for the study of ancient religions focusing on the transmission and adaptation of practices and vocabulary from and to different cultural environments.
The product we will present on this occasion is the LARES Conceptual Lexicon of Religious Acculturation in Antiquity and Late Antiquity, a digital lexicon encoded in EpiDoc and published through the EFES (EpiDoc Front-End services) publication platform. The lexicon can bee seen as a conceptual and socio-cultural map of significant religious terms and collects several entries, which analyze from a syncronical and diacronical perspective sources mentioning them, categorized with designed markers. The markers are divided in three main fields (representation, communication, fruition), respectively subdivided into three realms of relevance (practice/belief/fiction, sign/meaning/speech, system/instruments/structures): a specific markup has been created to allow searching options.
In this poster, we will show how epigraphic souces are treated in the LARES lexicon, trying to answer some question related to the digital representation of inscriptions and religious terms contained in them.