Project:About

The project

The online edition Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum (TIR) was created during an FWF-funded research project (no. P 25495) conducted at the Department for Linguistics of the University of Vienna. Funding ran from 24^th June 2013 until 23^rd June 2016.

The contributors are:

• Stefan Schumacher (project director)
• Gudrun Bajc (illustrator and photographer)
• Martin Braun (system administrator)
• Sindy Kluge (research and data entry)
• Corinna Salomon (research and data entry)

The aim of the TIR project was a comprehensive collection, display and linguistic analysis of the inscriptions which are considered part of the Raetic corpus. The project therefore comprised the following tasks:

• Collecting all Raetic inscriptions hitherto known, including those of doubtful status.
• Examining the original inscriptions, and documenting them, including photos, drawings and photogrammetry.
• Collecting and examining the secondary literature concerning both the individual inscriptions, and Raetic language and script, archaeology, and history in general.
• Creating a database and online interactive platform capable of displaying the inscriptions in an online corpus, with all aspects of the inscriptions (linguistic, archaeological, and graphematic data) documented exhaustively.

The edition

Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum is an online edition of the Raetic inscriptions in the form of an interactive online platform of the MediaWiki type.

As of 24^th June 2016, with the end of the project, the edition can be considered complete. All inscriptions and the objects they are written on, except the lost pieces, were examined, and all are recorded in TIR on individual pages. The website will continue to be edited and serviced. Minor corrections may still be made; further information on the Raetic script, language and archaeology of the Raetic area will be added continuously in the form of pages for words, morphemes, phonemes, characters and sites, as well as overviews of relevant topics. For information on the structure of the system and help with navigating it and accessing all the information it contains, please consult How to use TIR.

The TIR edition is fully citable: in the future, pages will only be deleted and created anew when this is made necessary for technical reasons. Otherwise, all changes made in the data provided on the website are recorded via the page history – i.e., even when pages are updated, all previous versions will be accessible. See Project:Terms_of_Use on how to cite TIR as well as information on licenses.

Partner projects and associated websites

The project is considered to be a follow-up task to Lexicon Leponticum, an online edition of the Cisalpine Celtic inscriptions, and constitutes the next step towards a comprehensive online collection and edition of sources concerning the North Italic alphabets. In the course of the project, the employment of free open-source software for the online presentation of scientific content in the humanities has been be further improved and refined. We encourage the adoption of such collaboration and communication tools as MediaWiki for scientific purposes.

You may also like to try out the search screen for characters in Raetic inscriptions provided by GEAS.

The TIR project took part in the COST-project AELAW - Ancient European Languages and Writings (ISCH COST Action IS1407), supported by the European Union, active from 13^th April 2015 to 12^th April 2019. Further information on the AELAW-project can be found on the project's website.

Project and post-project activity

Publications

• Sindy Kluge, Corinna Salomon & Stefan Schumacher, 'Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Eine neue Inschriftendatenbank', Ferdinandea. Die Zeitung des Vereins Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum Nr. 32 (Mai–Juli 2015), 9.
• Sindy Kluge & Corinna Salomon, 'Ausgewählte Funde aus Dercolo im Kontext der rätischen Inschriften', Wissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Tiroler Landesmuseen 8/2015, 80–95.
• Corinna Salomon, Raetic. Language – Writing – Epigraphy. AELAW Booklet 2 (Zaragoza 2017).
• Corinna Salomon, 'Zu Varianten von Pi und Tau in rätischen Inschriften', Die Sprache 51,2 (2014/2015 [2017]), 237–263. (download pdf)
• Corinna Salomon, 'Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum – New readings and inscriptions', Die Sprache 52,1 (2016/2017 [2018]), 32–101. (download pdf)
• Margarethe Kirchmayr & Stefan Schumacher, 'Ein Miniaturschild mit rätischer Inschrift vom Fernpass', in: UPIKU:TAUKE (FS Tomedi), ed. Simon Hye & Ulrike Töchterle (= Universitätsforschungen zur prähistorischen Archäologie 339; Bonn 2019), 257–268.
• Stefan Schumacher & Corinna Salomon, 'Die rätischen Inschriften vom Schneidjoch (Brandenberger Alpen, Tirol)', Die Höhle – Zeitschrift für Karst- und Höhlenkunde 70 (2019), 159–174. (download pdf)
• Corinna Salomon, 'Raetic and runes: On the relevance of North Italic inscriptions for the question of the origin of the Runic script', in: Runic Inscriptions and the Early History of the Germanic Languages, ed. H. F. Nielsen & R. Nedoma (= NOWELE 73.1 special issue; Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2020), 155–194.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Some remarks on the personal name system of Raetic', Namenkundliche Informationen 112 (2020), 375–408.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Das Verhältnis der rätischen Sprache zum Etruskischen', Bayerische Archäologie 1/2021, 40–47.
• Corinna Salomon, 'On the relationship and emergence of the Raetic alphabets', in: Aprender la escritura, olvidar la escritura. Nuevas perspectivas sobre la historia de la escritura en el Occidente romano, ed. N. Moncunill & M. Ramírez-Sánchez (= Anejos de Veleja, Series Minor 39; Vitoria/Gasteiz 2021), 181–206.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Divergency and Correlation in the North Italic Alphabets. Some Thoughts about Future Lines of Research', in: Wege zur Konfiguration der Zeichen-Phonem-Beziehung (LautSchriftSprache / ScriptandSound 4 conference proceedings), ed. A. Bauer & G. Waxenberger (Wiesbaden 2021), 75–93.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Raetic', in: Palaeoeuropean Languages and Epigraphic Cultures. Challenges and New Perspectives. Proceedings of the International Conference "Palaeoeuropean Languages and Epigraphic Cultures. Challenges and Research Approaches" (Rome, March 13-15, 2019), ed. F. Beltrán Lloris, B. Díaz Ariño, M. J. Estarán Tolosa & C. Jordán Cólera (= Palaeohispanica 20; 2021), I 263–298.

Talks

• Presentation of the project and database on 29^th January 2015 at the Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum (invitation [pdf, 105 KB] ).
• Corinna Salomon, 'Probleme der Schriftentwicklung nördlich des Po', Colloquium in honour of Bedřich Hrozný (Vienna Department of Linguistics), 15^th May 2015.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum', 1^st Training School of the AELAW project (Jaca), 9^th September 2015.
• Stefan Schumacher, 'Raetic', 2^nd Training School of the AELAW project (Verona), 6^th September 2016.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Die lateinische Inschrift auf dem Opistograph TV-1 (Castelciés) – Lesungs- und Datierungsfragen', 70^th Papyrologisch-epigraphische Werkstatt (Vienna Department of Ancient History), 24^th October 2016.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Raetic and Runes. On the Relevance of North Italic Inscriptions for the Question of the Origin of the Runic Script', Runic Inscriptions and the Early History of the Germanic Languages (University of Southern Denmark, Odense), March 14^th 2017.
• David Stifter & Corinna Salomon, 'MediaWiki in Academic Online Publications – Asset or Drawback?', Academia and Wikipedia: Critical Perspectives in Education and Research (Maynooth University), 18^th June 2018.
• Corinna Salomon, 'The Raetic alphabets – local variants or independent traditions?', Learning Scripts, Forgetting Scripts. New approaches to the history of writing in the Roman West (Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria), 8^th November 2018.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Die norditalischen Alphabete – Genese und Interferenz', LautSchriftSprache/ScriptandSound 4 (LMU Munich), 10^th November 2018.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Raetic: gaps of knowledge and lines of research', Lingue e scritture paleoeuropee: sfide e prospettive degli studi (AELAW conference, EEHAR Rome), 13^th March 2019.
• Corinna Salomon, 'On the productivity of Raetic patronyms I – The inner-Raetic evidence', Personal Names and Cultural Reconstructions (University of Helsinki), 22^nd August 2019.
• Corinna Salomon, 'On the productivity of Raetic patronyms II – The evidence of Roman inscriptions', Bewegte Namen. Anpassungsprozesse von Eigennamen in räumlichen, zeitlichen und sozialen Spannungsfeldern (GfN-Tagung Münster), 11^th September 2019.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Alphabets in Contact – Some thoughts on literacy in Iron Age Northern Italy', Classics Research Seminar, Trinity College Dublin, 9^th October 2019.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Raetic Epigraphic Documents as Landmarks of Waterway Transit in the Central Alps', Down by the Water. Interdisciplinary symposium on the role of water transit points in past societies (University of Helsinki), 8^th November 2019.
• Corinna Salomon, 'On the Raetic and Etruscan vowel systems', 17^th Old World Conference in Phonology (University of Warsaw), 6^th February 2020.
• Corinna Salomon, 'The study of Raetic – Introduction and current research', St. Petersburg Indo-European Department of the Institute of Linguistic Studies research seminar (St. Petersburg/online), 27^th October 2020.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Lexicon Leponticum, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum, and Semantic Media-Wiki as a DH tool', Digital Italy (University of Durham/online), 7^th September 2021.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Alphabet systemisation in North Italic writing cultures', On the systematic nature of writing systems. 13^th International Workshop on Writing Systems and Literacy (University of North Carolina/online), 21^st–23^rd October 2021.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Early Runic text types and the models for Runic literacy', at the Ninth International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Functions of Runic Literacy 200 to 1500 AD – Text types and historico-cultural contexts, Akademie Sankelmark, 14–19 June 2022.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Keltische (und rätische) Onomastik in der Schweiz', at the 15. Tagung des Arbeitskreises der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Namenforschung: Namenforschung und Altertumskunde, Universität Zürich, 7–9 October 2022.
• Corinna Salomon & Martin Braun, 'Semantic MediaWiki for digital editing: Lexicon Leponticum and Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum', at the ENCODE conference: Encoding across Languages and Technologies, Universitet i Oslo, 14 October 2022.
• Corinna Salomon, 'Mapping North Italic inscriptions: the distribution of the linguistic and alphabetic evidence', at the St. Petersburg Indo-European Department of the Institute of Linguistic Studies research seminar special session: Texts and mpas (St. Petersburg/online), 19 November 2022.