Epi2DAP - Epigraphic Data Analysis & Data Processing

The Epi2DAP project focuses on the automatic recognition of letterforms engraved on Cherchell's ancient inscriptions. With LIS expertise, processing will be applied to 2,000 digitized images from the CCJ photo library and the EpiCherchell Open Access database, to confirm and refine the dates proposed by epigraphists.

The establishment of a precise chronology based on character shapes, forms used and the evolution of wording, using a batch of archaeologically dated inscriptions, will enable us to anchor all the inscriptions in their historical context and thus enrich the history of the area. This attempt at unsupervised chronological serialization, applied to these unique and technically heterogeneous ancient images, will provide an "objective" classification of the writings, which will be submitted to the expertise of EpiCherchell epigraphists and specialists with a view to programmed publications.

A formalism for representing and querying the information produced will be studied. The aim will be to express the spatio-temporal relationships between inscriptions, and to integrate the analyses produced by HISOMA into the "Text Encoding Initiative" (XML/TEI) format. This innovative process will constitute a study model applicable to other corpora and scripts, and will serve as the basis for the Internationally Doctoral Workshop on Digital Epigraphy.