STTL Project - poster at Epigraphy.info IX workshop

STTL is a well-known acronym standing for SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS, and, quite expectedly, it was chosen as the acronym of the research project titled “Sit Tibi Terra Levis: Formulae and Phrases from Funerary Monuments of Ancient Liburnia and Iapodia”. The Project is funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) and shall last for four years (2023–2027). This contribution shall present the project itself, its aims and goals, as well as the results achieved during its first year. The project team will analyse funerary monuments and sites from two northwestern regions of Roman Dalmatia. The main focus will be on epigraphic phrases and formulas, but the research will also focus on content analysis and correlation with other relevant sources (archaeological, linguistic, historical and other), archaeological and spatial analyses, and similar. To achieve that, various methods will be applied using an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach, so, in addition to classical historical and epigraphical methods, methods of digital humanities in general and digital epigraphy in a narrower sense, as well as methods of spatial analysis characteristic of geographical and cartographic research, will also be used. The expected results are multiple, starting with the creation of a thoroughly researched epigraphic corpus and its open access publication. We expect to achieve a better understanding of funeral rituals and the relationship between the living and the dead in the Roman world; also, we expect to detect certain differences between better and stronger Romanized zones (such as Liburnia) and less Romanized ones (such as Iapodia). Hopefully, the achieved results will be a reference for other Roman provincial areas.