Etruscan Sigla Project

Team Spannabe: Spencer Border | Nathan Folkert | Benjamin Fagin | Anthony Marley

   The Etruscan Sigla Project aims to assemble documentation on the thousands of examples of Etruscan nonverbal writings (sigla) of one or more letters, numbers or symbols dating from around 700 BCE. They are incised, painted or stamped on objects of many different types made of clay, metal, bone, ivory and stone. These markings found on numerous Etruscan archaeological sites, are normally relegated to the background in Etruscan studies in favor of letters that form words and can therefore be studied from a linguistic perspective.

   In order to investigate the potential of communication in these markings, ESP will create a database of previously published sigla that aims to recognize and group similar items by means of matching scanned images and other factors such as date provenance, context, artifact type, artifact function, and location of the mark on the artifact. An international team from the US and Italy - archaeologists and computer scientists, professors and students - will meet and share research and will experiment to develop terminology, methodology and software in multiple languages for the new systematic tool.