The Ancient Graffiti Project: Geo-Spatial Visualization and
Search Tools for Ancient Handwrien Inscriptions
Rebecca Benefiel
Sara Sprenkle
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA, USA 24450
benefielr,sprenkles@wlu.edu
Holly M. Sypniewski
Millsaps College
Jackson, MS, USA
sypnih@millsaps.edu
Jamie White
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA, USA 24450
whitej17@mail.wlu.edu
ABSTRACT
is paper discusses how the Ancient Graffiti Project publishes the
digital content of ancient epigraphic material and makes handwrit-
ten inscriptions from the first century AD more accessible through
the use of geo-referenced, spatial interfaces, interlinked and ex-
panded reference data, and innovative tools that enhance searching.
Ancient graffiti are texts, but they are texts that exist within a phys-
ical environment. We have designed the Ancient Graffiti Project
(AGP) to provide a richer understanding of these handwrien in-
scriptions from the first century AD in their archaeological context.
Interactive maps allow a user to retrieve and analyze all the graffiti
in a particular location. ese and other tools, from filters that
refine searches to brief descriptions and translations to explain the
content of these writings, have been designed to reach multiple
audiences, including scholars, students, and interested members of
the public. We discuss how we have designed AGP from its incep-
tion to be integrated within and interoperable with the Epigraphic
Database Roma. e spatial and physical context of graffiti also
allows us to link with other spatially oriented digital projects on
the ancient world, including the ancient gazeeer Pleiades.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Applied computing →Arts and humanities;
KEYWORDS
epigraphic databases, visualization, ancient history, archaeology
ACM Reference format:
Rebecca Benefiel, Sara Sprenkle, Holly M. Sypniewski, and Jamie White.
2017. e Ancient Graffiti Project: Geo-Spatial Visualization and Search
Tools for Ancient Handwrien Inscriptions. In Proceedings of Digital Access
to Textual Cultural Heritage, G¨ oingen, Germany, June 2017 (DATeCH ’17),
6 pages.
DOI: 10.1145/3078081.3078104
1 INTRODUCTION
e handwrien wall-inscriptions (graffiti) of ancient Pompeii and
Herculaneum provide abundant, fascinating epigraphic material
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DOI: 10.1145/3078081.3078104
for the study of Roman antiquity. Graffiti are highly individual-
ized and heterogeneous in content, format, handwriting, and ex-
pression; therefore, multiple factors hinder aempts at studying
ancient graffiti collectively and holistically. e Ancient Graffiti
Project (hp://ancientgraffiti.org) has been designed: 1) to provide
a scholarly resource for the study of graffiti by providing accurate,
comprehensive, and up-to-date critical editions of each inscription;
2) to lower the barriers to the study of ancient graffiti and everyday
Latin for non-expert communities, including high school students;
and 3) to facilitate new avenues of research through digital tools, a
user-friendly interface, and a digital resource that is interoperable
and integrated within leading digital humanities initiatives.
As a born-digital project, AGP is designed to offer ample illus-
tration and rich contextual data for each inscription. Many graffiti
are deteriorating rapidly as the wall plaster upon which they were
wrien remains exposed to the elements. We have therefore begun
a program of fieldwork, surveying and recording the ancient graffiti
that still survive to document each inscription as fully as possible
before it disappears.
is paper presents our design and implementation of the An-
cient Graffiti Project (AGP). AGP unites data from the Epigraphic
Database Roma (edition of text and metadata, which our team pre-
pares for EDR) with additional metadata specific to this class of
inscriptions, which we are collecting from our fieldwork.
In Section 2 of this paper, we describe the motivation for de-
veloping the Ancient Graffiti Project, including the limitations of
current epigraphic databases and the opportunities presented by a
new digital resource focused on ancient graffiti. In Sections 3 and 4,
we outline the methodology we have employed in constructing
AGP and discuss how we enhance the epigraphic data presented in
EDR with graffiti-specific metadata. e Ancient Graffiti Project
architecture is described in Section 5, while the features of the user
interface are documented in Section 6. Section 7 offers our reflec-
tions on the current state of the Ancient Graffiti Project prototype
and discusses our plans for future development.
2 MOTIVATION FOR THE PROJECT
e concept and design for the Ancient Graffiti Project arose from
work with the Epigraphic Database Roma (EDR). e aim of EDR
(www.edr-edr.it) is to re-edit, digitize, and make publicly available
the ancient inscriptions of Italy from the archaic period up to the
seventh century AD. Launched in 1999, EDR now contains more
than 81,000 inscriptions. While a great majority of these inscrip-
tions were carved into stone, EDR was designed to incorporate
other inscribed material as well, including wooden tablets, silver
rings, and ancient graffiti scratched on walls [3, 6].
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