View source for Prosopography

{{Short description|Type of historical investigation}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2019}}

'''Prosopography''' is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis.<ref name="stone">Stone 1971.</ref> The discipline is considered to be one of the [[auxiliary sciences of history]].

==History==
British historian [[Lawrence Stone]] (1919–1999) brought the term to general attention in an explanatory article in 1971, although it had been used as early as 1897 with the publication of the ''[[Prosopographia Imperii Romani]]'' by German scholars.<ref name="stone"/> The word is drawn from the figure of [[prosopopeia]] in classical [[rhetoric]], introduced by [[Quintilian]], in which an absent or imagined person is {{clarify-span|figured forth—the "face created" as the Greek suggests|date=April 2025}}—in words, as if present.

Stone noted two uses of prosopography as an historian's tool, in uncovering deeper interests and connections beneath the superficial rhetoric of politics, to examine the structure of the political machine and in analysing the changing roles in society of status groups—holders of offices, members of associations—and assessing social mobility through family origins and social connections of recruits to those offices or memberships. "Invented as a tool of political history", Stone observed, "it is now being increasingly employed by the social historians".<ref>Stone 1971, p. 47.</ref>

==Overview==
Prosopographical research has the goal of learning about patterns of relationships and activities through the study of collective biography; it collects and analyses statistically relevant quantities of biographical data about a well-defined group of individuals. The technique is used for studying many pre-modern societies.

The nature of prosopographical research has evolved. In his 1971 essay, Lawrence Stone discussed an "older" form of prosopography which was principally concerned with well-known social elites, many of whom were already historical figures. Their genealogies were well researched and social webs and kinship linking could be traced, allowing a prosopography of a "power elite" to emerge. Prominent examples which Stone drew upon were the work of [[Charles A. Beard]] and Sir [[Lewis Namier]].<ref>Stone 1971, pp. 47–52.</ref>

Beard's ''[[An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States]]'' (1913) offered an explanation of the form and content of the [[U.S. Constitution]] by looking at the class background and economic interests of the [[Founding Fathers of the United States|Founding Fathers]]. Namier produced an equally influential study of the 18th-century [[House of Commons of Great Britain]], ''[[The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III]]'', and inspired a circle of historians whom Stone light-heartedly termed "Namier Inc".<ref>Stone 1971, p. 51.</ref> Stone contrasted this older prosopography with what in 1971 was the newer form of quantitative prosopography, which was concerned with much wider populations, particularly "ordinary people".<ref>Stone 1971, pp. 58–59.</ref> An early example of this kind of work is [[Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie]]'s pioneering [[microhistory]] ''[[Montaillou (book)|Montaillou]]'' (1975), which developed a picture of patterns of kinship and heresy as well as daily and seasonal routine in a small [[Occitania|Occitan]] village, the last pocket of [[Cathars]], from 1294 to 1324.

Stone anticipated that this new form of prosopography would become dominant as part of a growing wave of social science history.<ref>Stone 1971, pp. 69–73.</ref> Prosopography and other associated forms of [[social science]] and quantitative history went into a period of decline during the 1980s. In the 1990s, perhaps because of developments in computing and particularly in database software, prosopography was revived. The "new prosopography" has since become clearly established as an important approach in historical research.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

==Data in prosopographical research==
A certain mass of data is required for prosopographical research.<ref>The classic early example of prosopography was the series of volumes of ''Prosopographia Imperii Romani'', edited by P. von Rohden and H. Dessau (Berlin), appearing from 1897, which amassed a database covering the governing class of the Roman [[Principate]].</ref> The collection of data underlies the creation of a prosopography and, in contemporary research, this is usually in the form of an electronic database. But data assembly is not the goal of the research; rather, the objective is to understand patterns and relationships by analysing the data. A uniform set of criteria needs to be applied to the group in order to achieve meaningful results. And, as with any historical study, understanding the context of the lives studied is essential.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

In the words of prosopographer [[Katharine Keats-Rohan]], "prosopography is about what the analysis of the sum of data about many individuals can tell us about the different types of connection between them, and hence about how they operated within and upon the institutions—social, political, legal, economic, intellectual—of their time".<ref>Keats-Rohan 2000, p. 2.</ref>

In this sense prosopography is clearly related to, but distinct from, both [[biography]] and [[genealogy]]. While biography and prosopography overlap, and prosopography is interested in the details of individuals' lives, a prosopography is more than the plural of biography. A prosopography is not just any collection of [[biographies]]. The lives of the research subjects must have enough in common for relationships and connections to be uncovered. Genealogy, as practiced by family historians, has as its goal the reconstruction of familial relationships, and as such, well-conducted genealogical research may form the basis of a prosopography.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

==See also==
* [[Big data]]
* [[Historiography]]
* [[Prosopographical network]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

== Sources ==
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* Abbott, Josie M., ''The Angel in the Office''. British Sociological Association, 2009.
* Beech, George, "Prosopography" in ''Medieval studies: an introduction'', ed. James M. Powell, Syracuse University Press, 1992.
* Carney, T. F. "Prosopography: Payoffs and Pitfalls" ''Phoenix'' 27.2 (Summer, 1973), pp.&nbsp;156–179. Assessing results of prosopography applied to Roman Republican history.
* Erben, Michael, "A Preliminary Prosopography of the Victorian Street", ''Auto/Biography'' Vol. 4, 2/3, 1996.
* Greer, J, "Learning from linked lives: Narrativising the individual and group biographies of the guests at the 25th Jubilee dinner of the British Psychoanalytical Society at The Savoy, London, on 8th March 1939". University of Southampton, unpublished doctoral thesis, 2014.
* {{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=G5W6vCO_pYUC |title = The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: A.D. 395–527 |last1=Jones |first1=Arnold Hugh Martin |last2=Martindale |first2=John Robert |year=1971 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn = 9780521201599 |language = en }}
* {{cite journal |last=Keats-Rohan |first=Katharine |author-link=Katharine Keats-Rohan |title=Prosopography and computing: A marriage made in heaven? |journal=History and Computing |volume=12 |issue=1 |year=2000 |pages=1–11 |doi=10.3366/hac.2000.12.1.1}}
* {{Cite book|editor-last=Keats-Rohan|editor-first=Katharine|editor-link=Katharine Keats-Rohan|title=Prosopography Approaches and Applications: A Handbook|year=2007|location=Oxford|publisher=Unit for Prosopographical Research|isbn=9781900934121|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=98L4FS-1i1YC}}
* Krummel, Donald W., "Early American Imprint Bibliography and its Stories: An Introductory Course in Bibliographical Civics", ''Libraries & Culture'' '''40'''.3 (Summer, 2005), pp.&nbsp;239–250. {{doi|10.1353/lac.2005.0050}}.
* Lindgren, M., 'People of Pylos: Prosopographical and Methodological Studies in the Pylos Archives (Boreas). Uppsala (1973)
* Radner, K. (ed.), ''[http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/pna.html The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire]''. Helsinki, 1998–2002.
* {{cite journal |first=Lawrence |last=Stone |year=1971 |title=Prosopography |journal=Daedalus |volume=100 |issue=1 |pages=46–71 |jstor=20023990}}
{{Refend}}

== Further reading ==
{{Library resources box |by=no |onlinebooks=yes |others=yes |about=yes |label=Prosopography
 |viaf= |lccn= |lcheading= |wikititle= }}
* Broughton, T. R. S. 1972. "Senate and Senators of the Roman Republic: The Prosopographical Approach." In ''Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt.'' Vol. 1.1. Edited by Hildegard Temporini, 250–265. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
* Cameron, Averil, ed. 2003. ''Fifty Years of Prosopography: The Later Roman Empire, Byzantium and Beyond.'' Proceedings of the British Academy 118. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
* Eck, Werner. 2010. "Prosopography." In ''The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies'', Edited by Barchiesi, Alessandro and Scheidel, Walter. Oxford Handbooks, 146–159. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Pr.
* Fraser, P. M., and Elaine Matthews, eds. 1987–. ''A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names.'' Oxford: Clarendon.
* Svorenčík, Andrej. 2018. "The missing link: Prosopography in the history of economics." ''History of Political Economy'' 50.3 (2018): 605-613.

== External links ==
* {{cite web |url = http://prosopography.history.ox.ac.uk/index.htm |title = Prosopography Research |publisher=Modern History Research Unit, University of Oxford |access-date = 30 December 2015 }} – a prosopography portal that includes a short guide, a bibliography, and an international directory of current projects and researchers.
* [http://www.sibrium.org/en/Eligivs ''Eligivs'' – Anagrafica del personale di zecca] – Prosopography of the mint officials {{in lang|it}}.

{{Classical prosopography}}
{{Historiography}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Prosopography| ]]
[[Category:Historiography]]