Pleiades: Using Geographic Information
Pleiades users can employ standard web browsers to access high-quality reference information in multiple formats about the names and locations of ancient geographic features like settlements, aqueducts and regions. The initial information set derives from the working materials that supported creation of the present definitive reference work for Greek and Roman geography, the [BAtlas Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World].
Pleiades goes beyond print in terms of flexibility and extensibility, and beyond conventional geographic information systems in addressing the special challenges of historical geography and scholarly practice. In an unproblematic modern context, any geographic feature can be named and can be located precisely. In historical contexts, we may be unable to determine location, or we may be able to do so only imperfectly. On the other hand, we may be able to locate accurately a feature of interest, but we may be unable to discover its historical name(s), or we may be able to associate an attested name with a located feature only tentatively. Temporally, names come in and out of use. For some features, their locations and geospatial extents (the footprint or area of a province or lake, for example) can also change over time. Our ability to track these changes accurately varies.
The primary organizing notion for Pleiades content is the place. It serves as a locus for associations between attested names and measured locations, along with judgments about the reliability of these associations and the completeness of the underlying evidence. For simplicity we use these records to describe both discrete sites and larger regions (i.e., we call a space a place). Evidence, extended argument and additional information are cited via references associated with the places, names and locations. These references can link to either print or digital publications by way of the Pleiades Bibliography.
The Pleiades web application provides standard views of these records. Users can discover content relevant to their interests by browsing through lists organized by time period or by place type (e.g., settlement, tumulus). A textual search capability is also provided. Web pages for individual places list the standard metadata and include a rudimentary contextual map, with links to the associated names, locations and references. Simple, stable web addresses ensure reliable citation and linking. Users can easily view Pleiades content in Google Earth or subscribe to content updates using third-party feed reading software. Only rudimentary web programming skills are required to draw out data in the standard formats that support these applications for use in a rapidly expanding array of web-based visualization and analysis tools.
All of these capabilities draw upon fully vetted records (“published” content in the Pleiades workflow) and are freely available to any user of the world-wide web under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license; no special access, authentication or subscription is required. Access to unvetted, draft content is restricted to individual authors and their collaborators. Content undergoing review for publication is available only to authenticated community members.
