Ancient World Mapping Center

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER

This year the Center has notably advanced its goals and was particularly pleased to demonstrate its ongoing activities to a large group of enthusiastic W.P. Cummings Map Society members during their fall annual meeting. Acting Director Dr Jeffrey Becker has begun to develop the set of wall-maps projected in the 2005 conference panel “Ancient Geography for the Twenty-First Century Classroom” organized by Richard Talbert. This set of papers (by Talbert, former Center Director Tom Elliott, and three other speakers) is now published online in the 2006 Occasional Papers of the American Philological Association’s Committee on Ancient History. Becker has also completed the mapping component commissioned by Prof. Patrick Sims-Williams for the Ancient Celtic Placenames of Europe project based at Aberystwyth, Wales. Undergraduate assistants Graham Shepherd and Gannon Hubbard have worked to complete major components of Talbert’s electronic presentation of Peutinger’s Roman Map.

The NEH-funded Pleiades project [pleiades.stoa.org], managed by Tom Elliott, is progressing as planned to develop an online workspace for ancient geography. The system created by Elliott and software developer Sean Gillies now incorporates a subset of Barrington Atlas data, and permits online mapping as well as controlled editing of geographic names and integration with Google Earth. Graduate research assistant Brian Turner is enhancing the Barrington Atlas data by the insertion of primary source data and Greek orthography for names. Software design for bibliographic data and advanced geographic functions are on schedule for deployment in fall 2007. In consultation with key institutions and cognate projects elsewhere in North America and Europe, Elliott is planning the establishment of a common framework and standards for data exchange and online mapping across the entire field of ancient studies. Through its Pleiades project in particular, the Center would take the lead in this major, longterm initiative. Maps created by the Center continue to be in widespread demand for reproduction and adaptation. Talbert has begun discussions with Princeton University Press for the publication of a digital edition of the Barrington Atlas.

After a year of sterling service to the Center, Jeffrey Becker is now leaving to take up a visiting appointment in archaeology at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA. He will be succeeded in the fall by Elizabeth Robinson, doctoral student in Classics, whose special skills include experience in survey archaeology and use of GIS.

Richard Talbert, Director