Vetusta Monumenta: Ancient Monuments, A Digital Edition

FAIN: RQ-271255-20

Mizzou (Columbia, MO 65211-3020)
Noah Heringman (Project Director: December 2019 to May 2024)
Crystal Belle-Lane Lake (Co Project Director: December 2019 to May 2024)

Completion of an open access digital edition of Volume 3 of Vetusta Monumenta (Ancient Monuments), an 18th-century collection of engraved prints and essays published by the Society of Antiquaries of London from 1718 to 1906. (12 months)

This proposal seeks funding to support the completion and publication of a pioneering digital scholarly edition, a portion of which is already online at vetustamonumenta.org. Forty-four of the 169 prints that appeared before 1800 in the series Vetusta Monumenta remain to be completed. We are remediating these copperplate engravings, editing the original text that accompanied them, and making them accessible through scholarly commentary. This peer-reviewed scholarly edition has so far engaged more than 100 researchers in the task of reevaluating the history and significance of antiquarianism, the techniques and politics of preservation, and the visual and technical remediation of artifacts.

Associated Products

Modern Philology 120.1: Ancient Objects and new Media (Book)
Title: Modern Philology 120.1: Ancient Objects and new Media
Author: Heringman, Noah
Author: Lake, Crystal B.
Editor: Heringman, Noah
Editor: Lake, Crystal B.
Abstract: As editors of the digital edition of the print series Vetusta Monumenta (Ancient Monuments) (1718–1906), we became increasingly aware of the complex visual and verbal transactions that led to the production and circulation of antiquarian copperplate engravings in the eighteenth century. Vetusta Monumenta includes many noteworthy examples of prints that lavishly combine image with text and texture to evoke an ancient object, its media history, and a present-day audience. The surrounding media ecology also included debates captured in manuscript and print, field sketches, and preparatory drawings, all of which are examined in this special issue of Modern Philology. Vetusta Monumenta, originally published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, features large and exquisitely detailed prints that reflect the growing empirical and archaeological commitments of many antiquaries. At the same time, however, the prints reveal a more capacious understanding of the power that historical objects have to inspire a variety of critical and creative associations. Many of these antiquarian prints revel in the narrative potentialities of ancient objects, confirming the Society of Antiquaries’ own account of its identity as a “literary society.” In this introduction, therefore, we situate the Society’s work in relation to the larger field of antiquarian visual culture explored by the contributors to this special issue. These essays show how antiquaries, artists, and writers—from Maurice Johnson to William Blake to Ann Radcliffe—seized on the opportunities that ancient objects presented both for archaeological study and for reflection on how artifacts enter into and transform visual and discursive networks over time.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/mp/2022/120/1
Primary URL Description: This is the web page for the special issue on the journal's home page.
Access Model: subscription (scholarly journal)
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: ISSN 0026-8232
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Ancient Monuments: A Digital Edition (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Ancient Monuments: A Digital Edition
Author: Heringman, Noah
Author: Lake, Crystal B.
Author: Boehm, Katharina
Abstract: This digital edition of the print series Vetusta Monumenta is the main public-facing product of this grant.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://vetustamonumenta.org
Primary URL Description: this is the alias for the edition web site
Secondary URL: https://scalar.missouri.edu/vm/index
Secondary URL Description: This is the direct link to the edition home page
Access Model: open access

Antiquarian Media Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century (Article)
Title: Antiquarian Media Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Heringman, Noah
Author: Lake, Crystal B.
Abstract: This article, co-authored by the PI and co-PI ion this grant, is an introduction to the special issue described above as well as a contribution in its own right. Two plates from the NEH-funded edition are reproduced in the article.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/720632
Primary URL Description: direct link to article
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Modern Philology
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Vetusta Monumenta and the Making of a Digital Edition (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Vetusta Monumenta and the Making of a Digital Edition
Abstract: In this lecture I introduced Vetusta Monumenta and our work on the edition to a general audience
Author: Noah Heringman
Date: 3/4/2021
Location: Ellis Library, University of Missouri

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