Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Open Data in Ancient and Byzantine Studies

Valeria Vitale (Editor), Gabriel Bodard (Editor) 
Book cover for Open Data in Ancient and Byzantine Studies 

This volume presents case studies in classical and Byzantine research that exemplify practices, structures and standards in open data which transform and subvert historical scholarship. It leverages new data publication methods and embeds them as part of its argument, exploring the potential of non-linear discourse, multimedia content and data visualisation. Individual chapters illustrate how open scholarship enables a shift from authority-based interpretative frameworks to transparent, collaborative approaches, and combining datasets allows for analysis and comparisons at unprecedented scales, empowers researchers and elicits creative and original responses to old and new research questions.

Collaborative practices and data models lead historians to reflect rigorously and openly on assumptions, definitions and biases, encouraging more diverse approaches to interpretation of ancient sources. The different perspectives, methodologies, disciplines and research questions showcased in this book highlight the role of open data and code in the pursuit of historical research questions and the creation of new knowledge. It demonstrates that methods like linked open data, open licensing, documentation of standards and the publication of code influence the development of open data, tools and workflows, and are in turn nourished by a rich, sustainable classical open data ecosystem.

Published in association with: Institute of Classical Studies 

 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Copyright: © Authors 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.63674/shcx2882

Number of pages: 268

Number of illustrations: 24

Publication date: 8 October 2026

  • Introduction
    Valeria Vitale and Gabriel Bodard

  • 1 Historical authority and the prosopography of the Byzantine world: from factoids to assertions
    Tara Andrews

  • 2 Connecting late antiquities: challenges and opportunities for prosopographical data
    Charlotte Tupman & Richard Flower

  • 3 Venetian officals in sixteenth-century Cyprus: An online database and a pilgrimage account
    Tassos Papacostas

  • 4 Connections through collections: linking archaeological and epigraphic archives through places and people
    Alessandra Giovenco & Nurdan Atalan Çayırezmez

  • 5 Engraving the soil: the challenges of defining spatial footprints in Cypriot cultural heritage
    Stuart Dunn

  • 6 You can’t step into the same dataset twice: iterative improvement through reuse of open Libyan place data
    Valeria Vitale

  • 7 The makeup of Ajax: reconstructing networks of interpretation through the commentary tradition
    Charles Pletcher & Matteo Romanello

  • 8 Traces of lost libraries in the works of Alexandrian and Byzantine scholars: bibliographic open data from antiquity to Wikimedia
    Monica Berti

  • 9 Digital epigraphy at Dura-Europos: toward a FAIR-er inscriptional corpus
    Anne Hunnell Chen, Carl R. Rice, Ilaria Bucci & Jennifer A. Baird

  • 10 Reception of Sapphic language in Hadrianic verse epigraphy: building on open philological data
    Marja Vierros & Gabriel Bodard

  • 11 The next decade of Byzantine sigillography: the impact of open data as collaboration
    Martina Filosa, Jonathan Shea & Alessio Sopracasa

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