Articles by Maristella Pandolfini

The CAIE project aims to create a database collecting all the Etruscan monuments with inscriptions and to give, at the same time, critical importance not only at the text but also at the extra-linguistic context (i.e. elements regarding the origin and characteristics of the inscribed object, graphic peculiarities etc.). The purpose is a new and complex collection of Etruscan texts which, taking advantage of the power of computer databases, can deal at the same time with both information about the monument and its inscriptions; therefore, the program FUL/TEXT has been chosen, as an Information Retrieval System, duly adapted to the graphic particularities of the Etruscan language. At present about 5000 out of 10,000 so far known documents have been already recorded on file.

The authors present the “CAIE” project, carried out at the Istituto per l'archeologia etrusco-italica of the Italian CNR. The aim of the project is the computerisation of the Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae, with the use of an Information Retrieval System, and the association between texts and archaeological and epigraphical information, such as place and way of finding, support object, technical characteristics, chronology and bibliographical references. The choice of the program FUL/TEXT, implemented for IBM PC, is related to the facility of organising the data both in fixed fields, useful for recording archaeological and epigraphical information, and in free format, useful for recording texts. A personalisation of the program was also implemented, above all for solving the problems presented by the Etruscan language. Data bank consultation is foreseen and will allow interrogations to be made also by unspecialised users.