North Picene, also known as North Picenian or Northern Picene, is a supposed ancient language, which may have been spoken in part of central-eastern Italy. The evidence for the language consists of four inscriptions dating from the 1st millennium BC, three of them no more than small broken fragments. It is written in a form of the Old Italic alphabet. While its texts are easily transliterated, none of them have been translated so far. It is not possible to determine whether it is related to any other known language. Despite the use by modern scholars of a similar name, it does not appear that North Picene is closely related to South Picene, and they may not be related at all. The total number of words in the inscriptions is about 60. It is not even certain that the inscriptions are all in one language. Recent study of the techniques used on the stone and other considerations have led to the conclusion that all supposed North Picene inscriptions are in fact forgeries performed in the 1800s. The forerunner of the term North Picene was devised in 1933 by the linguist Joshua Whatmough, in Prae-Italic Dialects of Italy: a catalogue of texts in Italic languages. While neither Picene language could be read with any confidence at the time, Whatmough distinguished between six inscriptions in a central-east Italic language and all the rest southern. The northern later lost three and gained one. Before that work, all the inscriptions had been lumped together under a variety of names, such as "Sabellic." Corpus The corpus of North Picene inscriptions consists of four engraved items of similar lettering and decoration, one of known archaeological provenance and the others acquired out of context but believed to be of the same location and date. The known site is the excavation at Servici Cemetery in Novilara, a village several kilometres south of Pesaro. All four items are stelae or fragments of stelae. Italian scholars have adopted the habit of calling them all Novilara Stelae. "The Novilara Stele" usually refers to the largest of the four. To the lettered stelae is added one without lettering but inscribed with the scene of a naval battle. It is kept in Pesaro, where it served as a model for a reconstructed Picene ship. Novilara has been "excavated" since the mid-19th century. In those days the digging was not scientific, with no concern for