Prosopography of the Lascarid Period (PLAS)
Available
Authors
- Ekaterini Mitsiou
- Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
Description
In 2018, Ekaterini Mitsiou initiated the establishment of an online digital platform in order to create a prosopographical database for the Lascarid Period (PLAS, 1204-1258 CE). PLAS closes a lacuna between other prosopographies for the Byzantine Empire (the Prosopography of the Byzantine World at King's College on the one hand and the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, on the other hand). At the same time, this initiative is intended to serve as the digital core of a more far- reaching prosopography of late medieval Mediterranean and beyond; therefore, a cooperation has been established with the ENCHANT project (Entangled Charters of Anatolia, 1200-1300, funded by the Austrian Science Funds FWF) of Johannes Preiser-Kapeller. Via the use of the same database platform, immediate connections and synergies between this project and PLAS are created. For the moment, the PLAS-platform is online, but still in an early stage and accessible only via password. If you are however interested in the project, please contact Ekaterini Mitsiou.
Technical information
The technical core of PLAS is the database system Open Atlas, which is an open source software developed in Vienna for the storage and entanglement of complex and ambiguous historical and archaeological data. The five basic entities Actor (individuals, groups, and institutions), Event (of any kind), Place (localities from single buildings up to entire regions), Source (of any kind) and Reference (scholarly literature) can be connected in any combination. At the same time, temporal as well spatial uncertainties can be represented and mapped in all possible forms. A so-called “hierarchy tree builder” equally allows for a flexible organization of categorisations, attributes and linkages according to the needs of individual projects and researchers. Furthermore, texts (in all Unicode fonts) and images can be uploaded in order to enrich data entries. OpenAtlas is based on an internationally established data ontology standard (CIDOC- CRM), which guarantees interoperability with other database systems. Equally, data can be exported to standard GIS-software, web-based viewers or network analytical tools for further (also interactive) visualisation and analysis.
Paper delivered at workshops
- Ekaterini Mitsiou, "Documents, Persons and Modern Tools: Digital Prosopography and Diplomatics", in: PROSOPON Workshop: Entangled Prosopographies Connecting the ‘Prosopographies of the Later Roman and Byzantine Worlds’ Across the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond, Edinburgh, 8-9 December 2023
- Ekaterini Mitsiou, "Bridging the gap: towards a prosopography of the Lascarid period (PLAS)", in: Digital workshop Bridging the gap: the Prosopography of a fragmented world (13th cent), organized by C. Rapp and E. Mitsiou, 27-28 May 2021, Austrian Academy of Sciences