Inventory of Ancient Associations
Available
Project Director
- Vincent Gabrielsen
Description
Taken from the project website (accessed 2023-07-25):
The main aim of the Inventory of Ancient Associations is to document the private associations of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman worlds (ca. 500 BC to ca. AD 300) in an analytical and critical manner. The purpose is to stimulate research, debate, and discussion on this fast–evolving scholarly subject, not to provide definite answers or strait jackets to it. For this reason, an online database—rather than a soon out–dated printed publication—represented the best tool for the task: updates and global searches are the main advantages of the Inventory.
The geographical area covered extends from the Central Mediterranean to the Near East (see Geography). The Inventory collects and records in a standardized manner (see Structure), following a specific set of analytical criteria, all known attestations of private associations from this area and these periods, including languages other than Greek (e.g. Demotic Egyptian and Aramaic). The Inventory is a database of private associations, not of texts.
The term 'private' is a debated one: although certainly not ideal, it seemed the best option to generally define the phenomenon of non–state groups (i.e. groups other than civic subdivisions) under investigation. A useful discussion on the subject is the Introduction by V. Gabrielsen and C. A. Thomsen to the volume Private Associations and the Public Sphere. Proceedings of a Symposium held at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 9-11 September 2010, Copenhagen 2015.