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SigiDoc is a data model for the scholarly edition of Byzantine seals in TEI-XML, largely based on the experience gained by EpiDoc for inscriptions and papyri. This means that becoming familiar with the EpiDoc Guidelines is extremely important also when using SigiDoc. These SigiDoc Guidelines are mainly focused on four major topics: the metadata (such as physical description, history, dating, etc.), the transcription of seals' legends, features such as apparatus criticus, commentary or bibliography, and the indexing of the data (to these topics should be added the general overview of the XML structure of a SigiDoc edition, available here).
Consequently, this page groups together the links to all these main sections of the Guidelines:
Alessio Sopracasa, Martina Filosa et al. (2024), SigiDoc Guidelines: Byzantine Seals in TEI-XML (version 2.0). Available: https://github.com/SigiDoc/Guidelines/wiki.
SigiDoc represents the extension of the digital approach, already applied to inscriptions, coins, and papyri, to Byzantine seals. In the early years, the main aim was to store and analyse data; but in 2006, at the time of the Byzantine Congress in London, a group of sigillographers met to consider the possible next step, a way of publishing seals, using XML markup, which could incorporate the functions of a database. Talks continued in 2010 and 2011 at King's College London, Dumbarton Oaks, and during the Byzantine Congress held in Sofia (a record of some of those previous discussions is still available in a Wiki, which, however, has not been updated since 2011). The intention was to build on the markup protocols which had been created for inscriptions (EpiDoc) which were then developed for papyri (Papyri.info), and later modified for the publication of coins (Nomisma). Professor Charlotte Roueché and her colleagues were using EpiDoc for inscriptions, and the attempts to get funding to extend the work to seals were only successful in 2015, in the framework of a Marie Curie fellowship at King's College London (Digiseal), where Dr Alessio Sopracasa worked under the supervision of Prof. Roueché and Dr. Gabriel Bodard, one of the main architects of EpiDoc, and SigiDoc entered in a second - and very different - phase of its development.
In the next years, notably thanks to the interest showed by Prof. Claudia Sode (Cologne University), a small but determined team has been created around Dr Sopracasa, including, besides Prof. Sode, Dr Vivien Prigent (from the CNRS) and Martina Filosa (from Cologne University), and with the technical assistance of several digital humanists.
SigiDoc went public for the first time in May 2019: it was presented to the international community of Byzantine sigillographers during the 12th International Symposium of Byzantine Sigillography held at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
SigiDoc is largely based on the experience of EpiDoc, the set of recommendations for epigraphic material and makes an extensive use of EFES (EpiDoc Front-End Services), a customisable platform for the online publication of ancient texts in EpiDoc. EpiDoc in particular gave SigiDoc experience and solutions for the description and the analysis of seals' legends and metadata (physical description, history, dating, etc.), but this body of experience has been adapted, selected, and enhanced in order to make it suitable for SigiDoc, which builds on the experience already gained in other fields to develop a set of tools specifically designed for sigillographers.
The current and future developments of SigiDoc are now carried out in the framework of the French-German project Unlocking the Hidden Value of Seals: New Methodologies for Historical Research in Byzantine Studies (DigiByzSeal), jointy funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and involving the Monde byzantin team of the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-CNRS, Paris), the Department of Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek Philology of the University of Cologne and the Cologne Center for eHumanities of the University of Cologne.
The project members are:
- Claes Neuefeind (Universität zu Köln)
- Claudia Sode (Universität zu Köln)
- Alessio Sopracasa (Sorbonne Université - CNRS UMR 8167)
- Jan Bigalke
- Jonathan Blumtritt
- Maria Teresa Catalano
- Sviatoslav Drach
- Sofia Efthymoglou
- Pia Tabea Charlene Evening
- Martina Filosa
- Benedikte Löbbert
- Marcel Schaeben
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Author: Alessio Sopracasa
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Author: Martina Filosa
SigiDoc version: 2.0