Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum (15th century) and the Origins of Classical Archaeology.

Project Information

MapAeg

Grant agreement ID: 894231

DOI

10.3030/894231

Project closed

EC signature date 3 April 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 1 November 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 269 002,56

EU contribution

€ 269 002,56

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MapAeg (Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum (15th century) and the Origins of Classical Archaeology.)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Mapping the Aegean had as its main objective the promotion of the study of the Liber Insularum Archipelagi (1420) by the Florentine traveler Cristoforo Buondelmonti, highlighting the importance of this book in the rediscovery of Greece and its past and the birth of Classical archaeology. This book can be considered the first guide to the Greek islands and the forerunner of the new literary genre of Isolaria. The textual descriptions of each island are accompanied by colour maps which not only render the physical features of the territory but also pay attention to the presence of settlements, castles, churches and ancient ruins. Because of this unusual format and the importance of its cartographic apparatus, we prepared a digital edition where it is possible to access both the text and the maps in an interactive way. The results are a digital publication of a manuscript copy of the Liber accompanied by the Latin transcription, the English translation and a commentary and a project website where it is possible to access the entire English translation of the Liber with ca 1500 geographical and historical names linked to Wikidata and a pilot of the digital edition based on the paragraph on Corfu. After an outgoing phase at Stanford where I joined the Classics Department and I was affiliated to the Center of Textual and Spatial Analysis, I came back to the Department of Humanities at Ca’Foscari for the conclusion of the project. During this final year, I continued to collaborate with the Venice Center for Digital and Public Humanities where in addition to complete my training in Digital Humanities, I worked toward the creation of a partnership between this Center and the Stanford counterpart which culminated in two exchange visits. I also worked toward the implementation of the digital component and its frontend web application which was prepared in collaboration with a private company. In the spring and during the summer I was on two research missions to Athens where I visited various research libraries to retrieve specialized Modern Greek bibliography on the islands necessary to complete my commentary.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first two years of the action, I started an intensive Digital Humanities training program, started to work on the implementation of the digital edition and presented the project on several occasions. The dissemination and communication plan continued also during the incoming phase at Ca’ Foscari, with presentations at conferences and other events at Stanford, Yale and Oxford. During the last year I worked toward the creation of a front-end web application to showcase the digital edition online. This application was officially presented with a seminar talk given at the Venice Center for Digital and Public Humanities, which was recorded and is now available online on the official YouTube channel of the Center. The challenges and tools used for this digital edition were also discussed in an article, co-authored with the technical advisor of the project Daniele Fusi, and accepted for publication on Open Research Europe, the official open-access platform for European Commission funded researchers.
The web app was also used to introduce MapAeg to the participants of the Veneto Night, the Researchers’ Night event organized annually at Ca’ Foscari, and for a series of classes and seminars to undergraduate and graduate students in Italy and Greece.
The final event of the action was the organization of a two-day International Conference focused on Cristoforo Buondelmonti and other travellers to Greece, with the participation of scholars from Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Germany and the US. The first day focused on Buondelmonti and its work at the center of the process of early rediscovery of Greece, its antiquities and its past while the second day gave space to the presentation of Digital Humanities projects dedicated to travels and explorations of Greece. The conference received the patronage of Italian and Greek institutions and was well attended by an audience made by colleagues and students from Ca’ Foscari, graduate students and professors from Stanford and other people interested in the research topics. The event was closed with a walking tour of Venice to significant places for the history of Greek Studies in the city which was inserted in the official program of the Erasmus Days.
Both the launching of the web application and the conference were covered by Ca’Foscari News, to which I gave a long interview explaining my research and announcing the various initiatives to present the results.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In line with its main objective, through the combination of traditional scholarship, digital tools and intensive campaign of dissemination and communication events, MapAeg has successfully contributed to the knowledge and study of the Liber Insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti and has shed light on the important role this text had in the early phases of the rediscovery of Greece and the origins of Classical archaeology.
During this final year of the project, I have been working on the publication of an edition of the Liber Insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti which, in addition to a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript 71 in the Gennadius Library, will offer a Latin transcription of the text, an English translation, and a commentary as well as the possibility to consult and use the maps in an interactive way. This book presents itself as a cutting-edge publication which integrates the authority of a monograph with the technology and the concept of a digital project creating a model for the presentation of the project results in line with the principle of European funded research.
The other result of the action is the creation of a project website and a web application for the visualization of the digital edition of the Liber Insularum, where in addition to the full English text with ca 1500 geographic and historical names linked to Wikidata and a Google Earth view of the Aegean with all the mappable places, it is also possible to access a pilot of the digital edition based on the section on Corfu. The use of comprehensive, yet modular approach and of
standard formats for metadata, textual, images-related and archeological information ensure the
findability, access, integration, analysis of data and their future re-use in subsequent research projects dealing with Buondelmonti.
Finally, I want to highlight that, thanks to my double affiliation and the contact I created between the VeDPH at Ca’ Foscari and CESTA at Stanford during my outgoing phase, a collaboration has been established between the two Centers and the two teams have met both in California (October 2022), and in Italy (October 2023). A third meeting will be held at Stanford in the Spring 2024 (April 22-26). I consider this result particularly impactful because the collaboration between Ca’ Foscari and Stanford will allow a bilateral transfer of knowledge, skills, and best practice in Digital Humanities in a dimension which goes beyond the scope and length of MapAeg.

"Mapping the Aegean" - Berkeley, March 24, 2022

"Greek Antiquities in Florentine Humanism" - University of Siberia, September 21-25, 2021

"Mapping the Aegean" - workshop - Stanford University- 1 April 2021

"Greek Island Hopping" - Stanford Archaeology Center (SAC), April 30, 2022