SoylentNews

KritonK writes:

SigLA [sigla.phis.me] is an interdisciplinary project blending linguistics and computer science and aiming at developing a systematic, exhaustive and user friendly open access database of all inscriptions known to date written in the Linear A script of Bronze Age Greece (ca. 1800-1450 BCE), to date still undeciphered. Such a research tool is currently missing, and is highly desirable inasmuch as essential in order to carry out statistical and palæographic analyses within the epigraphic corpus, currently available in print form only. In fact, one of the hindrances to decipherment prospects is the current impossibility to carry out any meaningful linguistic statistical analysis and palæographic sign comparison covering the whole corpus of Linear A inscriptions due to the limited resources available. This is especially true with respect to research tools, as all material is only available in (cumbersome) print form. Collecting the Linear A inscriptions in a unified database is of paramount importance to be able to answer sophisticated palæographical and linguistic questions about the Linear A script as well as the language (Minoan) it encodes, which will help us reconstruct the socio-historical context of the Minoan civilisation.

(Summary taken from the accompanying paper [sigla.phis.me].)

Original Submission