Anne Chen, Bard College
The International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA), a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is aimed at reassembling and recontextualizing archaeological information from the ancient site of Dura-Europos (Syria). Using Linked Open Data, and the Wikidata platform specifically, IDEA is working to digitally reassemble materials in separate collections across the world, provide more transparent and easily intelligible context for buildings and artifacts discovered at a time when interest was more in unearthing museum-quality pieces than in highlighting contextual relationships and assemblages, and finally, to improve inequalities in access to the information and materials from the site that are held in the West. In an AMS 2024 presentation, we propose to introduce IDEA’s methods and recent work on archival photographs, papyri, inscriptions, and graffiti from the site. At the heart of this work lies the development of EpiDoc XML and Wikidata models for organizing and publishing ancient written documents which, building on the current epigraphic and papyrological standards and integrating data in a digital urban gazetteer, aim to improve the accessibility and searchability of the rich multilingual heritage of Dura-Europos (including but not limited to Greek, Latin, and Aramaic).