A New Era of Epigraphy is both a scholarly Festschrift and a methodological manifesto. Celebrating 40 years of the Epigraphic Database Clauss–Slaby (EDCS), the volume stands as a tribute to its founders, Manfred Clauss and Wolfgang A. Slaby, while simultaneously assessing how digital tools have reshaped the study of the ancient Roman world. With more than 540,000 Latin inscriptions indexed, the EDCS is presented not merely as a database, but as a fundamental epistemological shift in epigraphic research, altering both the scale and the tempo at which inscriptions can be collected, compared and interpreted.
At its core, the volume reflects on the original vision of the EDCS: transforming epigraphy from a discipline dominated by slow, analogue consultation of monumental corpora such as the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum into a fast, searchable and globally accessible research environment. This vision is articulated most clearly in the prefatory reflections by Kolb and Speidel, as well as in Manfred Clauss’s retrospective account of the database’s development, which contrasts the laborious manual compilation of inscriptions with the near-instantaneous retrieval made possible by digital search functions. The EDCS is repeatedly described as an ‘extended checklist’, designed to provide reliable texts, basic metadata and concordances rather than exhaustive commentary or definitive editions.
This model has undeniably democratized epigraphic research. Several of the book’s numerous contributions demonstrate how scholars are now able to move rapidly from data collection to interpretation by relying on the large-scale compilation of inscriptions to trace naming patterns, administrative careers, regional distributions or thematic clusters before turning to historical analysis. The capacity to aggregate material across provinces and periods has lowered practical barriers to entry, allowing both established researchers and early career scholars to engage with epigraphic evidence at a scale that would previously have been unthinkable.
Yet the editors and contributors are careful not to overstate the database’s role. Kolb and Speidel explicitly stress that the EDCS was never intended to replace critical editions, and this caution is echoed consistently throughout the volume. Studies such as W. Eck’s analyses of senatorial fasti or M. Christol’s reconstruction of provincial careers demonstrate a recurrent methodological movement from database-driven discovery back to close philological, prosopographical and historical scrutiny of individual inscriptions. The tension between quantity and quality thus remains a productive one. The EDCS excels as a discovery tool, but it is not a substitute for the exhaustive commentary, contextual depth or interpretative judgement embodied in traditional corpora. It helps scholars find inscriptions; it does not absolve them from interpreting them critically.
The institutional move of the EDCS from Eichstätt to Zurich symbolises more than a change of address: it marks the full integration of epigraphy into the Digital Humanities. This transition is explicitly framed in the volume as a consolidation of the database’s long-term sustainability and institutional embedding, rather than a mere logistical relocation. Several contributions illustrate how inscriptions now function as shared datasets across disciplinary boundaries, serving not only epigraphers, but also historians, archaeologists, linguists and specialists in Roman administration.
The digital edition of Celtic divine names from Germania and Raetia, presented by W. Kumpitsch, V. Reiter and W. Spickermann, exemplifies this approach by combining epigraphic texts with archaeological metadata, GIS-based spatial visualisation and interoperability with EDCS, EDH and Trismegistos. Such projects demonstrate how inscriptions can be embedded within broader digital ecosystems, allowing for spatial, linguistic and thematic analyses that extend well beyond the traditional confines of epigraphy. Kolb’s study of milestones and distance markers along the viae publicae illustrates how large-scale epigraphic datasets enable the reconstruction of imperial communication networks, revealing the administrative rationality underlying Roman road systems. Similarly, studies drawing on large-scale prosopographical or administrative corpora rely on the database’s capacity to aggregate and cross-reference material rapidly, underscoring the extent to which epigraphy has become a form of structured digital infrastructure rather than an isolated auxiliary discipline.
However, the volume remains largely retrospective in its technological outlook. While it documents substantial methodological achievements, such as TEI/EpiDoc encoding, advanced search functionalities and platform interoperability, it engages only cautiously with emerging challenges. Topics such as the use of artificial intelligence for automated pattern recognition, large-scale semantic linking through Linked Open Data or predictive modelling based on epigraphic corpora are acknowledged only implicitly, if at all. As a result, the volume adopts a deliberately conservative stance, consolidating the achievements of digital epigraphy rather than actively charting its next transformative phase.
The heart of the volume lies in its presentation of new readings and newly discovered inscriptions. Contributions by scholars such as W. Eck and H. Solin reaffirm that the epigraphic frontier of the Roman world continues to expand, often through fragmentary and technically demanding material. Case studies range from Greek inscriptions in the Latin West to documentary evidence for Roman mining accidents and administrative practices, demonstrating both the geographical reach and the thematic diversity of contemporary epigraphic research.
While intellectually rigorous, some chapters verge on extreme specialisation. This tendency is particularly evident in contributions devoted to fine-grained onomastic or philological problems, where the interpretative pay-off remains largely internal to epigraphic scholarship. H. Solin’s detailed study of tegularius and related terms, for example, meticulously traces the semantic range, grammatical forms and palaeographic ambiguities of a single occupational designation across legal texts, inscriptions and medieval Latin usage. Similarly, B. Salway’s onomastic observations on military tombstones from Roman Anatolia hinge on subtle name-forms and spelling variants, whose historical implications, though precise, are not always made explicit for a broader audience. A.E. Cooley’s re-examination of a funerary ash-chest from Britain exemplifies how meticulous re-reading of well-known inscriptions can yield new historical insights, even in seemingly marginal provincial contexts.
Such micro-readings exemplify the highest standards of epigraphic exactitude, yet they may appear detached from wider historical narratives for readers outside the field. These contrasting tendencies, moving between micro-level precision and broader historical synthesis, are not a weakness of the volume, but rather a faithful reflection of contemporary epigraphy, a discipline in which methodological rigour and interpretative ambition are often held in productive tension.
Several studies explore inscriptions as instruments of social meaning and political negotiation. Analyses of kinship terminology, senatorial careers and provincial governance illuminate how local elites articulated identity and power within the imperial framework. C. Laes’s discussion of patrueles in Latin inscriptions demonstrates how precise kinship terminology functioned not merely as a descriptor of family relations, but as a marker of legal status and social proximity. W. Eck’s contributions on senatorial careers and the ordering of consules suffecti reveal how seemingly technical details, such as name sequence in diplomas or municipal fasti, encode hierarchies of prestige and political negotiation. Likewise, M. Christol’s reconstruction of the origins and career of Atticius Norbanus Strabo shows how epigraphic evidence can clarify the interaction between provincial elites and imperial administration, situating individual careers within broader patterns of governance and mobility.
The volume offers valuable insights into provincial dynamics in North Africa, Asia Minor and the Danubian regions. A. Mastino’s study of newly published inscriptions from the Temple of the Waters at Ain Zaghouan sheds light on the religious and civic life of Roman North Africa, illustrating how local cult practices were embedded within imperial frameworks of benefaction and urban display. For Asia Minor B. Salway’s analysis of military tombstones from Anatolia highlights the complex onomastic strategies adopted by soldiers and veterans, reflecting processes of mobility, cultural negotiation and identity formation in a linguistically diverse environment. Along these lines is F. Bérard’s study of a sevir augustalis and his magistrate son from Lyon, which offers a concise illustration of intergenerational social mobility within municipal elites of the western Roman Empire. The Danubian provinces are particularly well represented through studies such as F. Matei-Popescu and M. Simion’s reconstruction of a mining accident at Alburnus Maior, which combines epigraphic, legal and socio-economic evidence to illuminate labour organisation and risk in an imperial extraction zone, as well as D. Demicheli’s discussion of a ducenarius from Salona, revealing the administrative and military hierarchies operative along the Balkan frontier.
Nevertheless, a subtle imperial bias emerges. Regions with dense Latin epigraphy naturally dominate the discussion, while bilingual or non-epigraphic communities, especially in the eastern provinces, remain underrepresented. This reflects not an editorial failure, but a structural limitation of the epigraphic record, a limitation arguably amplified by database-driven research strategies.
The volume’s greatest strength lies in its authority and precision. Bringing together many of the leading figures in contemporary epigraphy, it offers a compelling demonstration of the field’s technical and methodological sophistication at a mature stage of its digital development. Its open-access publication, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, is particularly significant, ensuring that both the database and the scholarship it has generated remain accessible to researchers working outside well-funded institutional environments.
The volume’s limitations are structural rather than scholarly. A high level of assumed competence in Latin and Greek inevitably restricts accessibility, while the absence of a strong concluding synthesis leaves readers to articulate for themselves the broader historical implications of the individual studies. As with many edited collections, the intellectual brilliance of individual contributions does not always coalesce into a fully integrated narrative, even if their cumulative value is beyond doubt.
A New Era of Epigraphy is, in many respects, a monument to a monument. It convincingly demonstrates that the EDCS has transformed not only how scholars locate inscriptions, but also how they conceptualise the Roman world as a searchable, relational and analytically flexible corpus of evidence. At the same time, the volume offers a salutary reminder that digital tools enhance scholarship without replacing critical judgement, contextual interpretation or the material ‘voice’ of the stone itself.
Ultimately, A New Era of Epigraphy demonstrates that the impact of the EDCS is not merely technical, but conceptual. By rendering inscriptions searchable and relational, the database has reshaped the scale at which historical questions can be posed. Yet the volume consistently affirms that digital access does not replace historical interpretation. The future of epigraphy will depend not only on technological innovation, but on the critical reflexivity with which scholars engage digital tools.
This volume is an essential asset and a demanding yet rewarding resource for advanced scholars of Roman history, epigraphy and the digital humanities. It ultimately confirms that, while databases may reshape scholarly practice, historical interpretation remains a fundamentally human endeavour.
