Mapping Seals and People in the Byzantine Empire

by

Faculty Sponsor: Jesse Torgerson

Alex Williams

Alex is a rising junior at Wesleyan University, from Denver, Colorado. She is majoring in College of Letters, an interdisciplinary major of History, Literature, and Philosophy, and minoring in Data Analytics. Alex enjoys reading, math, and writing in her free time. 

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to advance the planning and structuring of a comprehensive relational database of artifacts from Constantinople, titled the “Constantinople Database of East Rome” or CEDR project. The CEDR project aims to create a centralized resource for Byzantine studies, facilitating a deeper understanding of the empire’s artifacts and objects. This summer’s work focused on two main contributions: structuring two significant datasets and demonstrating methods for integrating large, pre-existing datasets. The first dataset utilized is the Dumbarton Oaks Seal collection, made up of over 16,000 lead seals from the Byzantine Empire. The second dataset was Prosopography of the Byzantine World (PBW), a database of Byzantine people. Employing methods such as text analysis, connections were encoded between datasets. This project prepares the larger CDER project for cross-artifact comparison and lays the groundwork for a larger dataset of Byzantine seals and individuals. Future applications of this work include using the data for specific historical research questions, as well as incorporating other Byzantine data.

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