Image to Interpretation An Intelligent System

The ink and stylus tablets discovered at the Roman fort of Vindolanda are a unique resource for scholars of ancient history. However, the stylus tablets in particular are extremely difficult to read. This book details the development of what appears to be the first system constructed to aid experts in the process of reading an ancient document, exploring the extent to which techniques from Artificial Intelligence can be used to develop a system that could aid historians in reading the stylus texts. Image to Interpretation includes a model of how experts read ancient texts, a corpora of letter forms from the Vindolanda text corpus, and a detailed description of the architecture of the system. It will be of interest to papyrologists, researchers in Roman history and palaeography, computer and engineering scientists working in the field of Artificial Intelligence and image processing, and those interested in the use of computing in the humanities.

Melissa Terras is Lecturer in Electronic Communication, School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, University College London.

List of Tables

xii

1. Introduction

1

1.1 Vindolanda

2

1.2 The Vindolanda Texts

5

1.3 Image-Processing Techniques

9

1.4 An Interface for the System

12

1.5 Papyrology and Computing

12

1.6 Research Approach

17

1.7 Chapter Overview

22

I. Knowledge Elicitation and the Papyrologist

25

2. How do Papyrologists Read Ancient Texts?

27

2.1 Papyrology Discussed

28

2.2 Knowledge Elicitation: A Brief Guide

38

2.3 Knowledge Elicitation and Vindolanda

41

2.4 Associated Techniques: Content and Textual Analysis

47

2.5 Results

51

2.6 General Observations

72

2.7 Preliminary Conclusions

75

2.8 Models of Reading and Papyrology

77

2.9 Conclusion

82

3. The Palaeography of Vindolanda

84

3.1 Palaeography

85

3.2 Knowledge Elicitation and Palaeography

91

3.3 Information Used When Discussing Letter Forms

93

3.4 Derived Encoding Scheme

98

3.5 Building the Data Set

101

3.6 The Use of the GRAVA Annotator

105

3.7 Annotating the Characters

107

3.8 Results

110

3.9 Gathering Corpus Textual Data

111

3.10 How Representative is the Corpus?

113

3.11 Letter Forms

115

3.12 Conclusion

118

II. Image to Interpretation

121

4. Using Artificial Intelligence to Read the Vindolanda Texts

co-authored with Dr Paul Robertson

123

4.1 Introduction to the GRAVA System

124

4.2 The Original System Demonstrated

126

4.3 Preliminary Experiments

129

4.4 The Construction of Character Models

132

4.5 The New System Explained

133

4.6 An Agent In Action

135

4.7 Conclusion

137

5. Results

co-authored with Dr Paul Robertson

138

5.1 Using Ink Data for Ink Tablets

139

5.2 Using Ink Models for an Unknown Phrase

143

5.3 Using Ink Models for Stylus Tablets

145

5.4 Using Stylus Models for Stylus Tablets

147

5.5 Analysing Automated Data

148

5.6 Future Work

149

5.7 Conclusion

151

6. Conclusion

153

6.1 Knowledge Elicitation

154

6.2 Expanding the Existing System

158

6.3 Application Development

163

6.4 Evaluation

165

6.5 The Wider Scope

168

6.6 In Conclusion

169

Appendix A. Using a Stochastic MDL Architecture to Read the Vindolanda Texts

171

co-authored with Dr Paul Robertson

Appendix B. Annotation

200

Appendix C. Vindolanda Letter Forms Corpus

211

References

231

Index

249

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Image to Interpretation An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

FREE SHIPPING

Rent More, Save More! Use code: BBRENTAL

5% off 1 book, 7% off 2 books, 10% off 3+ books

Image to Interpretation An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

Digital License