Etruscans in the Archive: Epigraphy and Intellectual History through the Lens of the Uppsala Etruscological Collection

Etruscans in the Archive: Epigraphy and Intellectual History through the Lens of the Uppsala Etruscological Collection seeks to digitise and research the Etruscological collection of Olof August Danielsson.

Olof August Danielsson (1852-1933) was professor of Greek at Uppsala University, but much of his time was spent on the publication of Etruscan inscriptions in Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum (CIE). Danielsson was first recruited as an assistant to the original editor of CIE Carl Pauli, but took over the work after Pauli’s death in 1901. Together with German scholars Gustav Herbig and (after Herbig’s death) Ernst Sittig, as well as Italian scholar Bartolomeo Nogara, Danielsson oversaw the publication of three fascicles of CIE. Upon Danielsson’s death in 1933, all Etruscological materials in his possession were donated to the Uppsala University Library, forming the Uppsala Etruscological Collection.

The Uppsala Etruscological Collection contains forty years’ worth of field-notes and around 5500 facsimiles (primarily paper squeezes) of Etruscan inscriptions, covering a third of the known Etruscan inscriptions. It also contains photographs of Etruscan art and epigraphy, manuscripts and proofs of the CIE and correspondence between Danielsson, Pauli and other scholars on the topic of Etruscan inscriptions.

The project Etruscans in the Archive will make the Uppsala Etruscological collection available on the digital heritage platform Alvin (https://www.alvin-portal.org ) and build search-tools to help scholars navigate the digitised collection. The project is also researching the field-work and correspondence of Danielsson and his colleagues and exploring applications of the digitised epigraphic material in the collection.

Etruscans in the Archive is run by Annie C. Burman PhD, an affiliated researcher at the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University. The project will run from 2025 to 2027.