What's hot and new in studying ancient papyrus

*It's digital. As you might have guessed.

Papyrology and technology

The Stoa Consortium 05/07/10 19:37 Gabriel Bodard Conferences papyrology technology in classics

(Thanks to Gregg Schwendner for posting the papyrological congress programme at What’s New in Papyrology.)

Thursday August 19th, morning

88. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE I
Adam Bülow-Jacobsen presiding

89. Herwig Maehler Die Zukunft der griechischen Papyrologie

  1. Bart Van Beek Papyri in bits & bytes – electronic texts and how to use them

91. Marius Gerhardt Papyrus Portal Deutschland

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE I Roger Bagnall presiding

101. Reinhold Scholl Textmining und Papyri

  1. Herbert Verreth Topography of Egypt online

107. Joshua Sosin / James Cowey Digital papyrology : a new platform for collaborative control of DDbDP, HGV, and APIS data Plenary session in Room MR080 (1 hour)

Friday August 20th, morning

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE II
Rodney Ast presiding

133. Giovanna Menci Utilità di un database di alfabeti per lo studio della scrittura greca dei papiri

134. Marie-Hélène Marganne Les extensions du fichier Mertens-Pack3 du CEDOP AL

  1. Robert Kraft Imaging the papyri collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Philadelphia PA, USA)

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE III
James Cowey presiding

146. Roger T. Macfarlane / Stephen M. Bay Multi-Spectral Imaging and Papyrology : Advantages and Limitations

147. Adam Bülow-Jacobsen Digital infrared photography of papyri and ostraca

So this astonishingly rich programme of digital topics at the International Papyrological Congress this year makes me wonder: what would it take to get this much digital interest at a major epigraphic meeting, or the annual Classics meetings, for that matter? (A couple of Digital Classicist panels at recent APA/AIA and CA conferences notwithstanding–there’s nothing as diverse and in-the-wild as the above at any Classics conference I’ve been to in recent years.) (((Yeah man – that's some wild papyrology.)))

Can we do anything about this with top-down encouragement, or does it have to be a natural ground-swell? Or is papyrology just a naturally more technical subdiscipline than the rest of Classics?

(((You're laughin' now, but wait till it's 3,000 years from now and they're trying to piece together whatever is left of the Internet.)))