 Faculty of Classics University of Oxford |
IntroductionIn the summer of 2001 a new Faculty of Classics was created from the old Faculty of Literae Humaniores, and the Sackler Library of the Ancient World, adjacent to the Ashmolean Museum, was opened. The new Library contains the collection of books which had begun soon after Cockerell's neoclassical museum building opened in 1845, and had since become the prime university library for Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology. The Research Projects described in these web pages belong to the Faculty of Classics, and benefit from the great resources of the Sackler Library and Ashmolean Museum. They highlight the excellence of both, and the strength of Classics at Oxford. Fourteen research projects have been recognised by the Faculty's Standing Committee on Classics Research Projects chaired by Professor Fergus Millar. Nearly all have contract staff and funding from outside the university. Over the past decade they have been awarded several million pounds in research grants and during the academic year 2000/2001 their grant income accounted for roughly sixty-five per cent of that coming to Oxford University for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The projects make their work available to the scholarly world and the public through both traditional and electronic forms of publishing. Some [1,2,3,4] have a long and distinguished tradition of publication with the British Academy and Oxford University Press. Many have their own web sites, and some [3,8,14] bring the most advanced methods of image enhancement and protection to the study of classical antiquity. The range of subjects covered reflects the richly diverse research interests of the two Classics sub-faculties, Language and Literature, and Ancient History and Classical Archaeology. One [6] is an interdisciplinary archaeological project, three [3,11,12] document collections in the Ashmolean Museum, and three [3,9,10] are concerned with the reception of classical antiquity in literature and art. The 'research project' at Oxford is not a new concept, nor is the close association with libraries and museums. William Camden's Britannia (1586) and John Leland's Collectanea (1632), deposited in the Bodleian Library soon after it opened in 1618, can be seen as forerunners of the Faculty's research projects, relating to the history and antiquities of Britain [5,8]. The lexicographical projects [2,4] can be seen as continuing a tradition begun by the Oxford University Press - a tradition particularly strong in Classics. The origins of the Oxford Greek -English Lexicon can be taken back to 1834 when Dean Gaisford encouraged Henry George Liddell (later Dean of Christ Church), and Robert Scott (later Master of Balliol), to prepare a replacement for Franz Passow's Lexicon. The revised edition (1925) undertaken by Henry Stuart Jones, who became Camden Professor of Ancient History, was a research project of the British Academy, itself established in 1902. The Oxford Latin Dictionary was undertaken from 1933 by a team of scholars, mostly in Oxford, as a British Academy research project. Setting the present research projects in historical perspective would reveal why they were undertaken, what they set out to achieve, and how they developed, but that account is well beyond the remit of these web pages. To offer some sense of historical perspective, the projects are presented in the chronological order of their creation, beginning with the Oxyrhynchus Papyri [1]. In 1897 two young Oxford researchers, B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt, excavated at Oxyrhynchus and found fragments of papyri. This was an archaeological expedition, funded by the Egypt Exploration Society, in the tradition of the great late nineteenth-century excavations. The sixty-seven volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri which have been published since 1898 are a monumental resource for the study of Greek literature, the Greek language, and ancient history. The second project, The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources [2], developed from a proposal made to the British Academy in 1913 to make a new dictionary of medieval Latin to replace Dufresne's Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis (1678). The enterprise as a whole began in 1924, the Oxford project in 1965. More recently (1972) the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names [4], another major research project of the British Academy, began to collect data for a new onomastic dictionary. Since 1987 it has published four volumes, and has become a major reference book for classical studies. The Beazley Archive of Classical Archaeology and Art [3] differs from other research projects in that its original objects of study were purchased by the university for the Faculty in 1965 in gratitude for Sir John and Lady Beazley's great benefaction of classical antiquities to the Ashmolean Museum in the previous year. It has extensive physical assets in the form of photographs, notes, drawings, books and gem impressions. A second research unit in the Faculty is the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents [8], established in 1995. Roughly half of the research projects described in these
web pages date from 1995 onwards, when the nature of government funding
for research in the humanities began to change. The creation of a national
Arts and Humanities Research Board in 1998 further stimulated the development
of finite research projects with fixed-contract staff on a model used
in science-based subjects for many years. By 2001 the projects employ
some thirty-eight research workers, of whom more than half are post-doctoral.
Most are members of one of the two sub-faculties which make up Classics,
and all have an opportunity to contribute to undergraduate and graduate
teaching.
The tradition of Classics at Oxford is long and distinguished. Its future is bright and the research projects will play a significant role. They will grow in number, diversify further in range of subjects, and, in time, their results all will be available electronically for the benefit of the international academic community. Some are already. They will develop strategic plans for integration of their assets and for long-term preservation. They have already begun to develop the facility to search across datasets, bringing a new dimension to interdisciplinary studies. Some already work closely with research teams in other universities, in the United Kingdom and abroad, and many more will do so in the future. The possibility of linking Oxford's electronic resources with those held elsewhere will become a feature of advanced scholarship. D.K. This web program is an illustrated version of Research Projects
Group, Faculty of Classics (ISBN 1-903767-02-4). Each project has
prepared its own contribution. The paper and original electronic
versions were compiled in the Beazley Archive and edited by Donna
Kurtz, Archivist and the present Convenor of the Oxford Classics
Research Project Group. For the first electronic version, Florence
Maskell was responsible for text formatting, Ian Hiley for web page
production and Greg Parker for technical assistance. This version
has been transferred to the Classics website and adapted by Richard
Ashby. Erica Clarke, the Faculty's research project administrator,
proof-read the text for the web and Professor Fergus Millar read
this introduction and made many helpful suggestions. The Oxford Classics Research Projects GroupThe Group was formed in spring 2001 to bring projects and researchers together, to formulate plans for the accumulation and preservation of data, and to highlight the vitality of classical antiquity at Oxford. © C@O 2003: Classics at Oxford, Faculty of Classics. Webmaster. Last updated:
February 12, 2007.
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