In this section we publish short reports on the progress of the project, continuing its protohistory.
In May last year, we were able to get a generous renewal of our project funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF/FNS)! Thanks to this grant, Dr Georg Gerleigner could join our team as postdoctoral researcher, as well as student assistant Malte Schaffnit (see Who is who?). The funding, which runs until early 2020, will allow us to implement important extensions of content and functionality to the AVI database, as well as to conduct research on the material it contains.
A recent milestone reached in January 2018 consisted in adding links to the Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD), the Digital LIMC Basel database and databases of various museums which provide permanent links to their entries and contain good photographs and other useful information on inscribed pots in their collections (more museum databases are going to be added as they appear online). In the course of aligning the entries of the different databases on the AVI side, Georg and Malte identified not only numerous incorrect connections made years ago when the CAVI and AVI content was integrated into the BAPD. These we signal to the Beazley Archive. But also on our side there are a substantial number of mistakes and errors. These are being corrected in the database, as well as the results of the immense bibliographical work done by Florence and Victoria a few years ago (see Third Report below), plus completely new entries of vase-inscriptions hitherto unrecorded in (C)AVI, are going to be integrated into the database.
On the technical side we realised that the database (and the entire website) had to be changed to HTML5 and JavaScript after it became clear that Flash (which we used before) was going to be discontinued. This was hard labour, but now it is done, and the "Insert Data" functionality will also soon be ready for use; museum staff and researchers working in the field will then be invited to contribute to the database. A function to edit existing entries and upload photos will follow soon after.
Further updates to look forward to include, among others, the ability to search the database for textual categories of inscriptions (names, signatures, kalos etc.) and the integration of photographs. A second colloquium is planned for early 2020.
As for the first colloquium, the beautifully produced volume of the proceedings was published in 2016 (here is a first review).
We would very much appreciate to hear from you in order to make our database an even better resource. So please write us an e-mail (avi [at] unibas.ch) with any comments, criticisms, suggestions and corrections.
Rudolf Wachter and Georg Gerleigner
Time flies by so fast! In September 2013 Henry Immerwahr died, we are very sad, and AVI now has to get on without its master.
In June 2010, the Fonds zur Förderung von Lehre und Forschung, Basel, generously gave me another grant, and so did the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft (FAG), Basel, in 2012. Thanks to these subsidies, Simone Hiltscher further developed the database and created the Search Data form, which was ready to use in December 2010. In autumn 2011 I could send out the invitations to a colloquium, planned for 20–23 September 2012, in which the inscriptions on Attic vases should be in the focus of interest. The three days, first in Lausanne and then in Basel (as I have a part-time post in each of these two universities), were a great success. The proceedings will be published in the next few weeks. The FAG, when informing me of the grant they would give, strongly encouraged me to direct my next request to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF/FNS). My project proposal was successful, and since October 2013 the AVI project has been financed by the SNF. A few weeks ago, I submitted a request for another three years subsidising (October 2016 to September 2019. Please keep fingers crossed!
What have we done in the last two and a half years? Florence and Victoria (see the Whoiswho-page!) have gone through an enormous amount of new publications to fill the gap from c.1998, when Henry Immerwahr ceased to keep up with this laborious task. As with Henry, the AVI bibliography is restricted to publications concerning the inscriptions or presenting good photos, and it continues not to do mechanical name-dropping, but to exploit the publications and inform the user very briefly about new readings and other important issues. This takes time. And indeed, the results of this harvest have yet to be worked into the database, which will be possible only from this autumn onward, provided the SNF grants us another three years. I would love to do this myself, but my heavy obligations as a professor of Greek and Latin and Indo-European Linguistics in Basel and Lausanne largely restrain me from doing this in person.
Regular users of AVI from 2011 will have seen that searches have become more and more sophisticated. Kalos-names have been added as a category, inventory numbers and traditional numbers are being separated and more and more Beazley Archive Database numbers (BADB) added. Unfortunately, the BADB contains a heavily out-dated and incomplete version of AVI of 2010, which was not meant to be published, and, in addition, many AVI numbers given belong to wrong vases. "Oxford" will have to do something about this soon.
Recently, two more useful features have been added to AVI: First, Simone has just finished the Insert Data form, which is now being tested and, from October on (provided we get the new grant), we will be able to add about 500 "new" inscribed vases that are ready to be included. With the form, this will be much more comfortable. Second, a possibility to include photos has been created. Only a handful of sample photos have so far been uploaded (I wonder if you find one of them!), the bulk will follow again in the new period of subsidising. The Archive contains many hundred photos, mostly done by myself.
So much for now. We hope you find AVI useful. At the end of this year the entire community of researchers on inscribed Attic vases will be invited to contribute to AVI. So please come back frequently. We will need feedback. And in 2019 will be held another AVI colloquium.
Rudolf Wachter
This is the second AVI homepage. The first was established on 24 September 2004 on http://pages.unibas.ch/avi after three months of a provisional stage within the homepage of the Seminar für Klassische Philologie, University of Basel.
In the last seven months or so the CAVI data have been transformed into an SQL database, programmed by Simone Hiltscher. These are the header fields: A]: CAVI no. – Collection – Preservation – First Characteristics – Technique – Series – Shape – Second Characteristics – Provenance – Painter – Potter – Date. That could, e.g., read as follows: "2345a. Frs. of small RF bell krater with unusual foot. From Nola. Villa Giulia Painter. Second quarter fifth. Ca. 470 (Peredol’skaya)". As you can see, we have adhered as closely as possible to Immerwahr's arrangement. The other sections are: B] Decoration, C] Inscriptions, D] Commentary, E] Footnotes, and – transferred down here from the header section, F] Bibliography. The database will eventually become fully searchable, so that you will be able to search for, and find, a particular vase by means of, e.g., "Ολυττ" and "Priam", or "361/7" (ARV) and "477" (museum no.), or "Patroklos" and "ram", etc.
Since the bibliographical references in the vase entries have been changed to an up-to-date citation mode, a list of the full titles of books and periodicals had to be prepared. This was done by R.W. (with the intermediate help of Julia Bossart) from 2001 to now. Although the titles and page numbers of many articles are still lacking, the list is now in a state to allow publication. Finding those many old and remote works would not have been possible without the online library catalogues of Basel, Oxford, and the virtual catalogue at Karlsruhe, as well as the splendid libraries of the Archäologisches Seminar der Universität Basel and the Sackler Library at Oxford (where I can be present far too seldom these days). This was very time-consuming but exciting detective work and brought me in contact with numerous publications and authors past and present that I had not previously known.
In addition to that, the new homepage has been conceived and put online. The programming and layout are the work of Simone Hiltscher. We hope it is functional and aesthetically convincing.
Next we will prepare the final and interactive database surface, include the revised CAVI and new AVI entries, and start uploading photos.
Rudolf Wachter
What have we done so far? In 2003 I received a first grant by the Max Geldner Stiftung, Basel, and in 2005 a second one by the Fonds zur Förderung von Lehre und Forschung, Basel, for both of which we are extremely grateful. Thanks to these grants, I could employ a student assistant, Julia Bossart (see the who-is-who page!), who first mounted the collection of about 800 photos Henry Immerwahr had generously given us, and then took care of the bibliography. She had to look up hundreds of titles of books and articles to complete the huge list I had extracted from CAVI in 2001/2 in order to unify the references and give them a format closer to the Harvard system of referencing. The gigantic task of "cleaning" this bibliography is not yet accomplished, but we hope it is useful already in its present state.
In the corpus, I have added a number of spontaneous corrections (in [[...]]) at various places. Many more will be inserted directly into the database.
Apart from that, I have continued revising collections of inscribed Attic vases, whereby I have seen:
I have seen, moreover,
Revised versions of the respective (CAVI) items and new (AVI) entries have been prepared, too, but their publication has to await the creation of the database. This is soon ready, thanks to my new collaborator, Simone Hiltscher, an excellent web-designer and photographer, with whom I will further develop AVI. The updating of those collections and the addition of new ones will take its time because of other obligations. But I hope that other scholars, too, will eventually take part in this process, and AVI, as a continuous work in progress, will be attractive and useful to many.
Rudolf Wachter
Last update 2018-06-14