BEIGE

Epigraphic Data Base Italy, Gaul, Spain

The Beige Base received first funding under the ANR EPIPOLE, then by the Labex Transfers and finally by the ANR CAECINA

Project being finalized


Institutional Partners

ANR CAECINA AOROC - UMR8546-CNRS/ENS UMR5607, AUSONIUS Unv. de Picardie, Jule Verne

The registration of the inscriptions requires the creation of the database BEIGE (Epigraphic Base Italy, Gaul, Spain). It is intended to allow the storage, interrogation and feeding of data (media, contexts of each form of writing, knowledge of each type of location, with indications on the scripts and alphabets used), and benefits from the existence of two prior databases:

 the EPIPOLES database on Etruscan funeral inscriptions in Italy (M.-L. Haack), carried out as part of an ANR "Jeunes Chercvheur" program (2005-2009) and published online between 2009 and 2010. A report on this basis MySQL data was written in October 2013 (A. Tricoche), with a new structuration modeling which could serve as a basis for the new database.

 The BDD-Iberian base on the Paleohispanic inscriptions in the Northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula and the Southern of Gaul, carried out by Coline Ruiz-Darasse feed the new base of a large number of data, after the merge of the two bases in a unique structuring system.

Thus, the Beige database has the major feature of proposing a centralized census on the scale of the pre-Roman world, the other existing databases contenting themselves with listing the inscriptions of a particular language or zone (see, The Etruscan Texts Project database [R. Wallace, University of Massachusetts Amherst] or, for Palaeohispanic languages, the Banco de Datos de Lenguas Paleohispánicas HESPERIA [Javier de Hoz, Universidad Complutense de Madrid / Joaquin Gorrochategui, Universidad del País Vasco].

With its potential for multi-criteria search, the database will be a prerequisite for the study of language contact phenomena (change, acquisition, koinèisation, ownership), for the study of Interactions between social context, political context and context of enunciation in which these phenomena of contact occur andfinally for the role of language in collective identity structures.

The classification and analysis of this information, as well as the taking into account of personal names, ethnic terms and place names, will make it possible to present more precise and better documented advances in phenomena such as the variation and fluidity of contacts, The role and duration of interactions, and the importance of representations and linguistic attitudes that can influence practices, to which the recent work of sociolinguistics invites us to pay attention.