The Herculaneum Graffiti Project aims to document and make accessible the ancient graffiti from Herculaneum, Italy. For our 2014 field season, the project had two main objectives: 1) to locate, record, and fully document extant graffiti in Herculaneum, and 2) to process these inscriptions and their metadata and contribute content to the epigraphic databases of Epigraphic Database Roma (EDR) and the Europeana Network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy (EAGLE).

The fieldwork portion of the project consisted of locating and documenting extant graffiti. We employed technological applications to record these graffiti, including RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging). RTI, in particular, has already proved to be advantageous in documenting difficult to photograph inscriptions. The second portion of the project has focused on digitizing these inscriptions and entering them into an online, epigraphic database in order to make these ancient inscriptions more widely available to scholars and the public. To that end, the project is collaborating with the Epigraphic Database Roma (EDR) and continues to process these inscriptions and enter them into this international, digital epigraphic initiative.

During this first field season, the project was successful in locating and documenting many graffiti still extant in Herculaneum. Team members continue to analyze inscriptions and submit entries to EDR. In addition, each team, responsible for an individual insula, compiled a conservation report for their area.