Credits & Acknowledgements

Credits

I.Sicily has been funded by the University of Oxford John Fell Fund, Merton College Oxford, and the ERC Advanced Grant Crossreads (grant agreement no.885040).

I.Sicily was created and developed by Jonathan Prag, with the technical support of James Cummings and James Chartrand.

The Crossreads team, directed by Jonathan Prag, consists of: Germana Barone, Alessia Coccato, Chloe Colchester, Robert Crellin, Dmitry Dundua, Victoria Fendel, Ilenia Gradante, Paolo Mazzoleni, Valentina Mignosa, and Sophia Topf Aguiar De Medeiros, together with the development team of King’s Digital Lab: Arianna Ciula, Neil Jakeman, Zihao Lu, Geoffroy Noël, Tiffany Ong, Miguel Vieira with contributions from Ryan Heuser, Ginestra Ferraro and Pam Mellen.

The original dataset was collected by Jonathan Prag between 2001 and 2012, based upon published material. It was converted to EpiDoc by James Cummings in 2013. Museum data was collected by Michael Metcalfe between c.2013 and 2022. Geographical location data was edited by Valeria Vitale in 2013-2014. Simona Stoyanova provided further template development from 2020 onwards.

Epigraphic data and images have been collected in Sicily by Jonathan Prag, Ilenia Gradante, Valentina Mignosa, Alex Antoniou, Michael Metcalfe, Francesca Prado, and Flavio Santini, with the participation of students of the Universities of Palermo and Catania, and of the Liceo Lazzaro, Catania.

EpiDoc files have been edited continuously since 2013 by Jonathan Prag and many others, with Jonathan Prag having overall editorial responsibility. Contributors (detailed in the XML files to which they contributed) include: Valentina Mignosa, Simona Stoyanova, Ilenia Gradante, Marta Fogagnolo, Tuuli Aalholm, Alex Antoniou, Marina Barbieri, Andoni Llamazares, Claudio Vacanti, Alfredo Tosques, James Hua, Estella Kessler, Martin Lopez Howe, Tim Smith, Rosemary Fox.

The original web interface, live since 2017, was constructed by James Chartrand of OpenSky Solutions. This work included the development of a browser-based EpiDoc viewer (https://github.com/ISicily/epidoc-viewer), and a GitHub based tool for the documented upload of individual EpiDoc files to the Zenodo repository (https://github.com/jchartrand/zenodo-git-up). The first IIIF image server was also developed by James Chartrand of OpenSky solutions. The current IIIF image server was developed by Imran Asif (DiSc, University of Oxford). James Chartrand was also responsible for the implementation of a DTS API for the EpiDoc collection (https://github.com/ISicily/isicily-dts).

The new web interface and data processing infrastructure, developed in 2025, was designed and built by King’s Digital Lab. This included the development of a comprehensive system for processing TEI XML files, metadata extraction and transformation, lemma processing, and the conversion of raw epigraphic data into structured formats for web presentation. The system processes over 4,700 inscriptions and generates HTML, JSON, and structured data outputs that are used by the web application.

Image rights

All images, with the exception of those noted below, are reproduced with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana, according to article 1 of the convention between the Assessorato and the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, most recently renewed on 11 September 2025. In most cases, additional permission has been obtained from the relevant institution with immediate responsibility for the object in question.

Images of material from the Catacombs in Siracusa, and other sites falling under the authority of the Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra are reproduced further to permission granted by the Archivio Fotografico della Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, on 4 January 2022.

In both cases, these grant permission for the reproduction of images, taken either by members of the I.Sicily and Crossreads projects, or by the institutions hosting the material, on the I.Sicily website, where they may be freely viewed.

Permission is not granted for the further reproduction and re-use of these images, and users of the site may not download and re-use these images for other purposes. Any image re-use requires formal permission from the relevant authority (in most cases the relevant institution which curates the object in question, such as a Museum, Parco Archeologico, or Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali ed Ambientali). The images are made available via a IIIF server, and may therefore be pointed to and so incorporated into other online resources; in all such cases, the original source (I.Sicily) should be acknowledged.

The majority of images have been taken by members of the Crossreads project, or by the institution responsible for the object in question. Many of the photographs of inscriptions in the Catania Museo Civico Castello Ursino were taken by students of the Liceo Artistico “M.M. Lazzaro”, Catania, with whom we collaborated in 2016-2017 in the creation of an exhibition of a selection of the material. Material in the Museo regionale di Centuripe was additionally photographed by Francesca Prado in collaboration with Crossreads.

Images derived from publications are reproduced where an inscription is now lost or unrecoverable and where possible are taken from publications no longer in copyright, or with the relevant permission.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Regione Siciliana for its continued support of this project. That support was formalised with a convention between the Assessorato regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità siciliana (Regional Office for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity) and the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, first signed in 2022 and renewed in September 2025.

Support, collaboration, and access to materials has been provided by a huge number of Sicilian colleagues and institutions, both on a formal and an informal basis, as well as by many other colleagues devoted to the study of Sicily, to all of whom we are indebted, and we attempt to list them all here (any omission is entirely accidental, and if you think you should appear here - please remind us!):

  • L’Assessorato regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’IdentitĂ  siciliana

  • Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra

  • Parco archeologico e paesaggistico di Siracusa, Eloro, Villa del Tellaro e Akrai

  • Parco archeologico e paesaggistico di Catania e della Valle dell’Aci

  • Parco archeologico di Tindari

  • Parco archeologico di Naxos e Taormina

  • Parco archeologico di Segesta

  • Parco archeologico di Selinunte

  • Parco archeologico di Lilibeo-Marsala

  • Museo Archeologico Regionale P. Orsi, Siracusa

  • Museo Archeologico Regionale A. Salinas, Palermo

  • Museo Archeologico Regionale P. Griffo, Agrigento

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Messina

  • Soprintendenza del Mare

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Catania

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Siracusa

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Palermo

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Enna

  • Museo Civico Castello Ursino, Comune di Catania

  • Museo Civico “Baldassare Romano”, Comune di Termini Imerese

  • Museo regionale Agostino Pepoli, Trapani

  • Museo regionale di Centuripe

  • Museo civico archeologico di Ramacca

  • Museo regionale Saro Franco, Adrano

  • Museo della cultura e delle arti figurative bizantine e normanne, San Marco d’Alunzio

  • Museo interdisciplinare di Messina

  • Museo di Archeologia dell’UniversitĂ  di Catania

  • Palazzo Butera

  • Angela Maria Manenti

  • Rosa Lanteri

  • Gioconda Lamagna

  • Gabriella Tigano

  • Rocco Burgio

  • Fabio Lo Bono

  • Gioacchina Tiziana Ricciardi

  • Angela Merendino

  • Giulia Falco

  • Daria Spampinato

  • Orazio Licandro

  • Beatrice Basile

  • Concetta Ciurcina

  • Mariarita Sgarlata †

  • Sebastiano Tusa †

  • Roger Wilson

  • Michael Metcalfe

  • Francesca Prado

  • Sandra Ruvituso

  • Alessandra Merra

  • Maria Grazia Griffo

  • Rossana De Simone

  • Lorenzo Campagna

  • Carmine Ampolo

  • Monika TrĂĽmper

  • Francesca Spatafora

  • Claudio Vacanti