Prosopography, in historical studies, is an investigation of the common background characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives. Prosopography is an increasingly important approach within historical research. Prosopographical research has the aim of learning about patterns of relationships and activities through the study of collective biography, and proceeds by collecting and analysing statistically relevant quantities of biographical data about a well-defined group of individuals. A uniform set of criteria needs to be applied to the group in order to achieve meaningful results. The term is a popular one, and the concept is easily inflated. [<br /> ---- Julius Caesar was born in the year 100 BC] Historiography is a term with multiple meanings that has changed with time, place and observer, and is thus resistant to a single encompassing meaning. ... History studies the past in human terms. ...

Lawrence Stone brought the term to general attention in an explanatory article in 1971.^[1] The word is drawn from the figure prosopoeia in classical rhetoric, introduced by Quintilian, in which an absent or imagined person is figured forth -- the "face created" as the Greek suggests -- in words, as if present. Lawrence Stone (December 4, 1919-June 16, 1999) was a British historian of early modern Britain. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of spoken and written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ... Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. ...

It is apparent that a certain mass of data is required for prosopography.^[2] The collection of data underlies the creation of a prosopography, and in contemporary research this is usually in the form of an electronic database. However, data-assembly by itself should not be seen as the goal of prosopographical research; rather, the objective is to understand relationships by analysing the data. As leading prosopographer Katherine Keats-Rohan puts it: Dr. Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan is a history researcher at the University of Oxford specialising in prosopography. ...

'Prosopography is about what the analysis of the sum of data about many individuals can tell us about the different types of connexion between them, and hence about how they operated within and upon the institutions - social, political, legal, economic, intellectual - of their time.’. (Katharine Keats-Rohan, History and Computing 12.1, p. 2)

In this sense prosopography is clearly related to, but distinct from, both biography and genealogy. Whilst 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 must have sufficient 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 geneological research may form the basis of a prosopography, but the goals of prosopgraphical research are much wider. Dr Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan is a history researcher at the University of Oxford specialising in prosopography. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. ...

The nature of prosopographical research has developed over time. 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 well-known 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 Beard and Sir Lewis Namier. Charles 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. Sir Lewis Namier produced an equally influential study of the eighteenth century British House of Commons, and inspired a circle of historians whom Stone lightly termed "Namier Inc." Stone contrasted this older prosopography with what in 1971 was the newer form of quantitative prosopography, whose concern was with much wider populations including, particularly, 'ordinary people'. An example of this kind of work, published slightly later, is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's pioneering work of microhistory, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (1978), which developed a picture of patterns of kinship and heresy, daily and seasonal routine in a small Occitan village, the last pocket of Cathars, over a thirty-year period 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, but this promise was not immediately realised, as prosopography and other associated forms of social science and quantitative history went into a period of decline during the 1980s. In the 1990s, however, perhaps because of developments in computing, and particularly in database software, prosopography experienced a revival and is now clearly established as an important approach in historical research. Charles Austin Beard (November 27, 1874 _ September 1, 1948) was an American historian, author with James Harvey Robinson of The Development of Modern Europe (1907). ... Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier (June 27, 1888 - August 19, 1960) was a significant British historian. ... An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is a 1913 book by American historian Charles A. Beard. ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Page I of the Constitution of the United States of America Page II of the United States Constitution Page III of the United States Constitution Page IV of the United States Constitution The Syng inkstand, with which the Constitution was signed The Constitution of the United States is the supreme... ... Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier (June 27, 1888 - August 19, 1960) was a significant British historian. ... The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ... Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (born 1929) is a noted French historian whose work is focused upon Languedoc in the ancien regime focusing on the history of the peasantry. ... Microhistory is a branch of the study of history. ... Montaillou is a small village and commune in southern France. ... Occitania refers to the lands where the Occitan language is spoken. ... Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne in 1209. ... For broader historical context, see 1290s and 13th century. ... Events Publication of Defensor pacis by Marsilius of Padua Mansa Kankan Musa I, ruler of the Mali Empire arrives in Cairo on his hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. ...

Other examples of prosopographical research

Barbara Harvey's Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience (1993) is a prosopography that draws a group picture of monastic life, centered on the aggregate experience of the monks of Westminster Abbey. It explores some major themes of daily life— corporate and personal charity, diet, sickness and mortality, servants— in a mosaic formed of documentary flashes of momentary insight into a multitude of obscure lives that can never be pieced together into individual biographies. The Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, which is almost always referred to by its original name of Westminster Abbey, is a mainly Gothic church, on the scale of a cathedral (and indeed often mistaken for one), in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. ...

Sociologist Michael Erben has also explored the use of prosopography to investigate what might be called a 'street biography' in "A Preliminary Prosopography of the Victorian Street", Auto/Biography Vol 4, 2/3, (1996). Sourced mainly from census records, the data used included not only the demography but also the spatial classifications, occupations, and domestic arrangements of a street in Victorian Oxford. This material forms what Erben describes as an Unaffiliated or Disinterested Group, i.e. spatial locale may be all inhabitants had in common, unlike the Intentional Groups, with explicit shared interests, of more traditional prosopography. The work shows that such Unaffiliated Groups can yield much information on subjects such as social mobility in a given place and time. Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 ( 2001 census). ...

Notes

Further reading

• Keats-Rohan, Katherine S. B. Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166. 2v. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1999.
• Keats-Rohan, Katherine S. B. (ed). Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1997.
• Lindgren, M., 'People of Pylos: Prosopographical and Methodological Studies in the Pylos Archives (Boreas). Uppsala (1973)
• Radner, K. (ed.), The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Helsinki, 1998-2002. [1]
• Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge: University Press, 1971-92.
• Carney, T. F. "Prosopography: Payoffs and Pitfalls" Phoenix 27.2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 156-179. Assessing results of prosopgraphy applied to Roman Republican history.

Dr Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan is a history researcher at the University of Oxford specialising in prosopography. ... Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (usually abbreviated as PLRE) is a set of three volumes collectively describing every person attested or claimed to have lived in the Roman world from AD 260 to 641. ...

External link

• Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England - a project designed to provide a comprehensive biographical register of recorded inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon England (c. 450-1066), to be accessible in the form of a searchable on-line database, and intended to facilitate further research in many different aspects of Anglo-Saxon studies.