Technology & Tradition: a Synergic Approach to Deciphering, Analyzing and Annotating Epigraphic Writings (abridgement/condensed presentation)

This panel intends to discuss the advantages of computer-assisted study of writings as well as the exigency for collaboration between digital and traditional epigraphists. The advances in computing in the past few decades have resulted in the development of several digital tools meant to assist scholars decipher and analyze inscribed symbols. Some of the techniques involve 2D or 3D digitization of the inscriptions and various post-processing methods that help scholars recognize the inscribed characters or symbols, analyze their structure, and study writing techniques. This interdisciplinary panel that consists of computer scientists, computational linguists, heterogeneous writings experts (archaic Latin, cursive Latin, Egyptian writings), and epigraphists will address the following issues: the use of traditional and digital methodologies for deciphering and analyzing inscriptions, the accuracy and efficacy of a computer algorithm that tries to solve the same problem, text representation problems when iconicity is involved, optimal ways to train digital tools, and to what extent 2D, 3D representations, and text encodings follow, imitate, and enhance traditional methodologies.