IS1407 - Ancient European languages and writings (AELAW)

There is written evidence of about twenty fragmentary ancient European languages. Of these some 20,000 documents are conserved on stone, metal or pottery in diverse systems of writing, some of which have not been completely deciphered yet.

Research into them requires specialists in historical and philological-linguistic matters and these suffer from a pronounced geographical dispersion according to their geographical field of study (Gaul, Hispania Italy, the North of Africa) or to their corresponding linguistic family (Latin, Celtic, Italic, other minor Indo-European branches, Basque, …).

The main objective of the Action is the co-ordination of researchers dedicated to the study of the different ancient languages and writings with the aim of creating an ample work team capable of establishing the foundations for the creation, for the first time, of a large online data bank which will permit the cataloguing of all the currently known documents in this type of languages, thus introducing this important part of the European cultural heritage into the 21st century.