Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum

The term `Raetic` refers to some 230 inscriptions found in Northern Italy, the Austrian federal state of Tirol, the Swiss canton of Grisons, and the South of the German federal state of Bavaria. These inscriptions are roughly dated between the 6th and the 1st centuries BC and are the only remains of Raetic, a non-Indo-European language that we now know to be related to Etruscan. Despite various efforts in the past, the docu-mentation of the Raetic inscriptions is still inadequate, and our attempts at interpreting the inscriptions are still in their infancy. The aim of the project is a comprehensive collection, display and linguistic analysis of the Raetic inscriptions in the form of an online database of the MediaWiki type. The result will be a web-based interactive platform for displaying, storing and referring to the collected material. The project comprises the following tasks: (1) Collecting all Raetic inscriptions hitherto known, including those of doubtful status. (2) Examining the original inscriptions, and documenting them, including photos, drawings and, if necessary, laser scans. (3) Collecting and examining the secondary literature concerning both the individual inscriptions, and Raetic language, script, archaeology, and history in general. (4) Creating an online interactive database capable of displaying the inscriptions in an online corpus, with all aspects of the inscriptions (linguistic, archaeological, and graphematic data) documented exhaustively, in the best possible way. This project is a follow-up task to Lexicon Leponticum, an FWF-funded project at the Vienna Linguistics Department, and constitutes the next step towards a comprehensive online collection and edition of sources concerning the so-called North Italic scripts. In the course of the project, the employment of free open-source software for the online presentation of scientific content in the humanities will be further improved and re-fined. The project aspires to set new standards in applying Web 2.0 tools within linguistic studies, and en-courage the adoption of such collaboration and communication tools like MediaWiki for scientific purposes.

The project Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum served to collect the so-called Raetic Inscriptions and to make them accessible to the general public in an online database. The Raetic inscriptions are a group of some400 inscriptions roughly dated between the 6th and the 1st centuries BC and found mainly in northern Italy and western Austria. They are the only testimonies of the Raetic language, a non-Indo-European language of the eastern Alpine region. Raetic is a member of the Tyrrhenian language family (together with Etruscan in Central Italy, and Lemnian in the Aegaean Sea). It was written with two distinct alphabets, which are derived from the Etruscan script.In this project, all Raetic inscriptions hitherto known (including recent finds and finds of doubtful status) were examined in the original and documented exhaustively, including photos, archaeological drawings, and photogrammetry, which required 15 trips to museums and sites in Austria, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. The collected data and images were entered into the database, and the linguistic and palaeographic features of the inscriptions as well as the archaeological features of the objects bearing them were discussed. More- over, the database contains introductory texts and analyses concerning epigraphy, linguistics, palaeography, archaeology, and history in general. In the course of collecting the material, readings could be corrected and improved, and new insights were gained into the role of Raetic writing culture in the context of the pre- Roman peoples of Northern Italy. Thus, although previous surveys of the inscriptions have been published in book form, none of these publications is as comprehensive as the database, to say nothing of the fact that books cannot be enlarged after publication.For the time being, the edition can be considered complete. All inscriptions and the objects on which they are written, except the lost pieces, have been examined and recorded in the Thesaurus. However, the website will continue to be edited, improved and serviced, and it will probably be saved permanently by Vienna University. Minor corrections will still be made; and further information on the Raetic script, the Raetic language and on the archaeology of the Raetic area will be added continuously in the form of pages for words, morphemes, phonemes, characters and sites, as well as summary texts on relevant topics. Above all, any newly found inscriptions will be entered in the database as soon as possible.The project and the resulting online edition was designed as a follow-up project to Lexicon Leponticum and represents one further step towards a comprehensive online collection and edition of inscriptions written in the North Italic alphabets. In the course of the project, the use of free open-source software for the online presentation of scientific content in the humanities was further improved and refined. The program specific- ally adapted for the Thesaurus has been much improved vis-à-vis the trial version used for Lexicon Leponticum. Although it is currently custom-tailored to the specific characteristics of the Raetic corpus, it offers a flexible framework for epigraphical data. Because of our own experiences, we (i.e. the project team) strongly recommend the adoption of MediaWiki and similar tools for the dissemination of data in the humanities.The project continues to take part in the COST project AELAW Ancient European Languages and Writings (ISCH COST Action IS1407), supported by the European Union, active from April 13, 2015 to April 12, 2019.