Ancient World Mapping Center

5-1-2021 to 4-30-2022

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER (http://awmc.unc.edu)

Boosted not least by restored access to the Center itself in August after 16 months of remote working, this has been a year of achievement and optimism.  Two most challenging major projects are now all but completed, and the availability of two widely used resources offered by the Center should be restored soon.  In addition, favorable prospects for securing the Center’s future have emerged at last.

Commissioned cartography included one map for Jamie Kreiner’s Battles of the Brain (Liveright), another by Paul Cartledge for the Cambridge World History of Genocide, vol. 1, and five for Pliny the Elder’s World: Natural History Books 2-6, a translation by Brian Turner (former Center Director) and Richard Talbert, forthcoming imminently from Cambridge University Press.  However, by far the largest, most complex commission was 28 maps for a further Cambridge publication, Geographers of the Ancient Greek World edited by Graham Shipley (University of Leicester, U.K.).  This is a massive collaborative translation and commentary for which the Center contributed modest emergency funds last year to ensure timely completion of the text.  The specifications for its varied cartography proved very demanding, with numerous issues of layout and design to be resolved, but the outcome has been highly approved.  Of the 28, only the map (with inset) for Dionysios of Byzantion, Anaplous Bosporou, now awaits completion.    Licences which the Center issued for reproduction of its own previously published maps included one for Jessica Peritz’s article “The Castrato Remains – or, Galvanizing the Corpse of Musical Style” in the Journal of Musicology, and another for a forthcoming exhibition in the Luxembourg Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art about restoration of the Roman mosaic found at Vichten. 

The other most challenging major project now all but completed is the revised Routledge Atlas of Classical History, co-edited by Richard Talbert, Lindsay Holman and Benet Salway (University College London, U.K.).  All 142 full-color maps ranging in size from quarter-page to doublespread and including battle- and city-plans – the work of 30 expert contributors worldwide alongside the co-editors – are now ready.  Only some (overdue) accompanying texts and recommended readings are awaited [these fortunately arrived early in May; by its end the atlas was not just in the publisher’s hands, but also cleared for immediate production].  All four of the Center’s assistants gained the opportunity to revise or draft these maps, Hannah Shealy continuing from last year, now joined by Safiatou Bamba, Bryanna Ledbetter and Rachel Sarvey.  Bryanna also continued her preparation of gazetteers for completed maps.  At the same time Hannah skillfully drafted many of the maps for Geographers of the Ancient Greek World.

With classroom needs further in mind, the Center has initiated a new online Maps for Texts project to equip readers of Livy’s Roman history from the Second Punic War onwards with a 1:750,000 map, building on the recent edition and translation by John Yardley for the Loeb Classical Library; Rachel Sarvey has taken the lead so far.  The Center has also welcomed a request from the American Classical League for collaboration in making map materials available to the teachers nationwide that it represents, and in developing more.

Work has resumed to prepare for release – in the Center’s Maps for Texts series – Miguel Vargas’ map (1:750,000) that plots the spread of Catholic and Donatist bishoprics across North Africa by the early fifth century CE.

The Center has organized Richard Talbert’s extensive collection of maps of Asia Minor/Turkey made during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (Ottoman, British, German, Greek, Italian, Russian especially) to form the basis of an exhibition (primarily virtual) Late Ottoman Turkey in Princeton’s Forgotten Maps, 1883-1923 to be hosted in fall 2022 by Princeton University Library (which holds much of this scattered material, but far from all).  The pathbreaking synergy of this joint initiative promises to have lasting value.  The principal cartographers featured, Heinrich Kiepert and his son Richard, were very preoccupied with classical antiquity, and their long-lasting impact has escaped notice outside Turkey.  The Center’s preparations have notably benefited from Safiatou Bamba’s rare ability to read and translate Ottoman Turkish.

There is now good reason to expect that the frustrating dysfunction of two of the Center’s major digital resources relied upon worldwide is about to be overcome.  Generous efforts by a team at the University of Iowa to provide a fresh basis of support (at least temporarily) for Map Tiles are now at the testing stage; results seem most promising.  A web developer in Belgium has likewise devised a replacement support base for Map A on the Peutinger Map site; its test version too appears to operate soundly.  Restoration of both these resources will be a huge relief.

Because a viable plan has still to be settled for the Center’s future after June 30, 2022 – when Richard Talbert was due to step down – he has agreed to remain in post as part-time research professor for an additional year, encouraged by most supportive discussions with the History Department chair, Senior Associate Dean, and Dean of the College.  All three have committed to urging the new Deans (from June 30, 2022) to authorize an immediate search for a faculty member in History who will both teach ancient history and take charge of the Center.  The Department has ranked this position its top preference for searches in 2022-2023.

Meantime Lindsay Holman – who graduated PhD in August – has been appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Mercyhurst University, Erie, PA, and so is stepping down as Center Director after a remarkable five-year term in this increasingly demanding position.  It is impossible to express adequate thanks for the outstanding service she has so ably rendered throughout as cartographer, organizer, colleague and mentor.  Her departure is a blow, but it should be no surprise that her talents and record attract attention elsewhere.  Also to be thanked warmly are this year’s assistants Bryanna, Hannah, Safiatou and Rachel, the first three of whom are graduating.  For 2022-2023 – envisaged as primarily a year to prepare for transition – Richard Talbert remains in charge, to be assisted by Rachel Sarvey.

Lindsay Holman

Richard Talbert

5-1-2020 to 4-30-2021

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER (http://awmc.unc.edu)

The year will be remembered for an exceptional mix of developments: on the one hand, impressive productivity achieved remotely in the face of Covid’s continuing impact; on the other, the emergence of serious obstacles beyond the Center’s control that impair its effectiveness.  To be sure, these were only to be expected sooner or later, and can even be regarded as a tribute to the Center’s success.  Nonetheless they pose tough challenges to overcome.

The quantity and range of commissioned mapping undertaken for monographs and articles proved very high.  Requests fulfilled included one map and two plans for Mary Boatwright’s Imperial Women of Rome: Power, Gender, Context (Oxford University Press), four maps for Mark Thatcher’s The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy (also Oxford UP), two for Judith Barringer’s Olympia: A Cultural History (Princeton UP), three for Fred Naiden and co-editors, A Companion to Greek Warfare (Wiley Blackwell), as well as one or two maps each for Hilary Becker, Edmund Thomas and Everett Wheeler.

There was equally strong demand for acquiring and reproducing the Center’s own maps (still free of charge for non-commercial use).  Notably, Stanislav Doležal was licensed to reproduce several Roman Empire maps in his Konstantin: Cesta k moci (Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích). The many requests for Asia Minor in the Second Century C.E. came from users in Germany, Scotland, South Africa, Turkey and US.  The seven Wall Maps were sought by educators and students at all levels in Australia, Brazil, Netherlands, United Kingdom and US for display in classrooms or use in presentations.  Requests were also met for incorporating data into educational and commercial projects.  In particular, the Center partnered with Barnard College’s Empirical Reasoning Center to provide shapefiles for students taking its course “Society and Environment in the Ancient World.”  These shapefiles were used in QGIS workshops to create maps of the ancient landscape.  Roman roads data was supplied to Roman Podkolzine for integration into his Time Travel Rome mobile app.

There has been intensive effort to prepare revised maps and plans, along with accompanying texts, for the Atlas of Classical History in its new form co-edited by Richard Talbert, Lindsay Holman and Benet Salway (University College London), with the involvement of contributors old and new.  Drafting was again ably undertaken by Coleman Cheeley, joined this year by Hannah Shealy and Faith Virago; Bryanna Ledbetter prepared gazetteers for completed maps.  To illustrate progress, Holman and Talbert offered a presentation “Ancient History Course Maps Transformed by Advances in Cartography” for the poster session of the Archaeological Institute of America (virtual) annual meeting; viewers reacted very positively, and shared helpful observations.  The goal now is to deliver all materials to Routledge ready for production by December 2021.

Miguel Vargas completed the project he began last year to create a map (1:750,000 scale), with directory, that plots the spread of Catholic and Donatist bishoprics across North Africa by the early fifth century CE.  This addition to the Center’s Maps for Texts series is due for release once its review is concluded.

With the collaboration of experts and of IUPUI students, Prof. Elizabeth Wolfram Thill has continued to organize the scans of Great Marble Map of Rome fragments made in partnership with the Center and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Roma Capitale, for online presentation in a format acceptable to the latter.  Naturally, under present circumstances no further teamwork in Rome itself was possible.

To overcome serious unforeseen delay arising from Covid, the Center granted modest emergency funds to the University of Leicester, U.K., enabling Prof. Graham Shipley to complete and deliver to Cambridge University Press – by fall 2020, as planned – his pathbreaking, long-awaited Geographers of the Ancient Greek World, 35 texts translated by 14 scholars, with commentary.  Because of Covid’s onset Shipley was suddenly recalled to the classroom early, and could not then expect to resume the final stage of editing before 2022.  His work is of exceptional value for a clearer understanding of the ancient landscape.

During the year, two resources offered by the Center ceased to function as they should.  The Djakota tool which is vital for Map A on the Peutinger Map site is now considered outmoded by its provider and thus no longer maintained.  For similar reasons Mapbox has ceased to support the landscape base on which the Center’s Map Tiles depend.  Any map using Map Tiles is affected in consequence, including the one being prepared to accompany the translation of Pliny the Elder’s geographical books (Natural History 2 to 6 and more) by Brian Turner and Richard Talbert, now due for publication by Cambridge University Press in early 2022.  Work on this map has been suspended while the Center strives to identify and install satisfactory replacements for both resources affected.  How soon that can be achieved, however, is as yet impossible to predict, and the delay is made all the more regrettable by the extensive reliance placed on both by users worldwide.  Fortunately, the Center’s Antiquity-A-La-Carte remains unaffected, although it cannot form the basis of an interactive map.

Special thanks are due to all – and to Director Lindsay Holman in particular – for maintaining the Center’s momentum undaunted throughout a year when no physical access to it was possible.   Bryanna, Hannah and Faith – who is graduating, as is Coleman – have never set foot there.  They, and Miguel, have all performed excellently from remote locations, and those not returning will be truly missed.  Thanks are owed to the History Department for temporarily assigning the Center an office which could be used for some meetings and for storing materials.

Lindsay Holman continues as Director, with Richard Talbert remaining in charge as research professor.

Lindsay Holman

Richard Talbert

5-1-19 to 4-30-20

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER (http://awmc.unc.edu)

This year remained an impressively active one throughout for the Center, above all because mapmaking could still continue remotely during the campus lockdown from mid-March onwards.   Preparation of the revised edition of the textbook Atlas of Classical History saw accelerated progress, and there was expansion of the scope of the working partnership with Rome’s Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali.

A variety of maps were made on commission as usual, not only for monographs and articles, but also for the Ishtar Gate exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. Commissions included a map of Judaea for Anthony Keddie’s Republican Jesus: How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels forthcoming from University of California Press, and one of India and Bactria for Alexander Meeus and Kai Trampedach’s volume on Alexander the Great in the Steiner series Studies in Ancient Monarchies.  The number of requests for acquiring and reproducing the Center’s maps showed a marked rise this year.  In particular, the seven Wall Maps – which continue to be offered in digital format without charge for non-commercial purposes – have been in high demand from instructors and students at both school and college levels worldwide, most notably in Australia, Denmark, Italy, United Kingdom and US.

Miguel Vargas joined the Center to implement a project envisaged last year for the Maps for Texts series and now well advanced by him: a map, with directory, that plots the spread of Catholic and Donatist bishoprics across North Africa as documented in the record of the Carthage ‘conference’ in 411 CE.  To date, maps by others for this purpose (notably by Serge Lancel) have all been kept unsatisfyingly small-scale by a print-only format, in grayscale moreover.  The Center’s map in color on a physical landscape base at 1:750,000 – scale chosen to match that of Asia Minor and Black Sea in the Maps for Texts series – offers distinct improvement; its extraordinary elongation creates no obstacle for digital production and presentation.

The interactive map in preparation by Gabriel Moss and Ryan Horne to accompany the forthcoming translation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History Books 2 to 6 and more by Brian Turner and Richard Talbert is close to completion.  Meantime the translation itself of these ‘geographical’ books and passages has been delivered to Cambridge University Press for expert review.

After lengthy discussions, agreement was reached that Lindsay Holman and Benet Salway (University College London) should join Richard Talbert to co-edit the substantially revised edition of the Atlas of Classical History.  It is to be published by Routledge, with the maps all remade digitally in color, using the Center’s Map Tiles as base.  Contributors to the original edition are being invited to review the fresh drafts of their maps; at the same time new contributors have been recruited, in most instances for plans of cities that could not be accommodated previously.  So much mapmaking has provided exceptional opportunities for student assistants to gain training and experience.  Hania Zanib has specialized in drafting city- and battle-plans with precision.  Peter Streilein, Tyler Brown and Coleman Cheeley have concentrated on maps of the Near East, Aegean and Roman Empire. Ross Twele has begun to compile the gazetteer.

As Richard Talbert’s collection of maps made of Asia Minor (Turkey) during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries continues to expand in size and complexity, Ross Twele has also worked towards organizing its presentation online.

A supplement negotiated to the partnership agreement made last year with the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Roma Capitale authorized a three-week initiative in Rome to proceed during September–October.  Within this period a joint Italian–U.S. team made 3D scans of all 823 incised fragments of the Great Marble Map (Forma Urbis) to an accuracy of approximately 0.05 mm; because several of this formidable total were dispersed across Rome, visits to various museums were required (Museo dell’Ara Pacis, for example).  The number scanned far exceeded even the most optimistic estimate of what might be achieved in the limited time available.  Such success was due not least to the efficiency of the four 3D handheld structured light scanners used – three Creaform Go!SCAN and one Creaform Spark 3D.  Derek Miller (Center for Digital Scholarship, IUPUI) brought these scanners and oversaw their operation throughout.  Prof. Elizabeth Wolfram Thill (Classical Studies, IUPUI) again took a leading role.  She and Dr. Riccardo Montalbano in Rome (partially funded by the Center) have now begun the arduous work of organizing the scans for online presentation in a format that will enable a further agreement with the Sovrintendenza to be reached, one granting public access to this remarkable material.   In January Prof. Wolfram Thill outlined the recent progress made by the partnership, as well as future prospects, at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Washington, DC; the stream of questions following her paper attests to the high level of interest generated.  A potentially rewarding further goal – which in current conditions must remain on hold – is to scan likewise the neglected mass of uninscribed fragments; their number has been greatly increased by finds from recent tunneling for a new metro line in the area where the Map was displayed.

Once again this year it was the Center’s good fortune to have an outstanding workforce: three graduate students – Gabriel Moss, Ross Twele, Miguel Vargas; and four undergraduates – Tyler Brown, Coleman Cheeley, Peter Streilein, Hania Zanib.  All three graduating at the year’s end – former Director Gabriel Moss (PhD), Tyler Brown and Peter Streilein (both BA) – will be greatly missed.

A further word of sincere appreciation to all, including Director Lindsay Holman, is called for this year because of the pandemic crisis.  In mid-March, during the last hour before the sudden closure of Davis library, Lindsay brilliantly reconfigured the Center’s machines for remote working.  In consequence, everyone gained, and seized, the welcome opportunity to continue working and communicating from home – at a somewhat slower pace, to be sure, and with certain technical limitations, but overall almost as productively as before.

Lindsay Holman continues as Director, and Richard Talbert (after his retirement from all other duties) remains in charge as research professor.

Lindsay Holman

Richard Talbert

5-1-2018 to 4-30-2019

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER (http://awmc.unc.edu)

This has been a very productive year for the Center in a notable variety of ways.  Two especially satisfying highlights were a conference co-organized with departments at Duke University, and the implementation of a working partnership with Rome’s Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali.

Maps were produced on commission for publication in articles and monographs across an unusually wide range this year. The six maps for Jamie Kreiner’s Legions of Pigs: Ecology and Ethics in the Early Medieval West (Yale University Press) extended the Center’s regular timeframe to 1000 C.E., and its spatial frame to Scandinavia and Iceland.  The frame was also tested by the map of pre-modern south India produced for Leah Comeau’s Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World.  Challenging in other respects were six maps for two volumes on ancient warfare and sieges edited by Jeremy Armstrong, one map and two city plans for John Friend’s The Athenian Ephebeia in the Fourth Century B.C.. and two maps for a biography of Theodosius I by Mark Hebblewhite.

Special effort was made to complete three static maps in the Maps for Texts series, all released online between June and December 2018. The most taxing of these, and the largest (85 x 50 ins), is The Black Sea Described by Arrian around 130 C.E., produced at 1:750,000 scale to match the Center’s Wall Map Asia Minor in the Second Century C.E., together with a directory of places marked.  Because of the focused geographic coverage, a far more generous scale (1:100,000) was feasible for the map Dionysius of Byzantium, Anaplous of the Bosporus.  By its very nature, the map tracing Theophanes’ Journeys between Hermopolis and Antioch in the early fourth century C.E. (detailed in Rylands Papyri) is more schematic.  As the next addition to the series, the Center is considering a map that plots the spread of Catholic and Donatist bishoprics across North Africa as documented by the record of the Carthage ‘conference’ in 411 C.E.  Gabriel Moss and Ryan Horne have continued their work on an interactive map to accompany the forthcoming translation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History Books 2 to 6 by Brian Turner and Richard Talbert.

Work for a revision of the latter’s Atlas of Classical History increased in volume and variety.  Kimberly Oliver and Peter Streilein both drafted maps of regions of the Roman Empire, while Hania Zanib developed city- and battle-plans.  With Lindsay Holman’s mentorship all three students gained impressive mastery of cartographic skills.  Their results demonstrate how rewardingly the pre-digital maps of the Atlas can now be enhanced.

Richard Talbert’s book Challenges of Mapping the Classical World was published by Routledge.  Preparatory work for his study of the mapping of Asia Minor during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries continued.  Leah Hinshaw completed the formidable task of identifying and annotating the changes of many kinds introduced for each edition (up to four) of all twenty-four sheets of Richard Kiepert’s Karte von Kleinasien.  Peter Raleigh made good progress in matching those sheets with the bewildering mass of derivative maps produced by the British, Greek, Italian and Ottoman military authorities.

When the work accomplished for the United States Committee for the Blue Shield reached a suitable stopping-point in the fall, the decision was taken to halt there because this heavy commitment could no longer be sustained satisfactorily along with other initiatives.  The Center maintained its ongoing collaboration with the Pleiades Project at New York University (pleiades.stoa.org); both Lindsay Holman and Gabriel Moss continue to serve on the project’s editorial board.

Stock of the Center’s seven Wall Maps for the Ancient World is exhausted, and the publisher Routledge reluctantly decided against reprinting because the cost for such large sheets has become prohibitive.  With the rights consequently reverting to the Center, it has made all seven available online, after minor revision to one, The World of the New Testament and the Journeys of Paul.

The weekend conference Digital Cartography: New Maps, Ancient History – co-organized with Duke’s Departments of Classical Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies – fulfilled the hope of attracting graduate students and junior faculty at multiple institutions (US, Canada, Czech Republic) to discuss the integration of GIS technology and cartography into their research and their teaching.  Lively, thought-provoking interchange developed about the ethical and practical implications of using this technology in the field.

The academic and technological contexts from which the Center sprang originally, and within which it functions today, featured prominently in the wide-ranging panel “Mapping the Classical World Since 1869: Past and Future Directions,” which Richard Talbert was invited to organize for the Society for Classical Studies 2019 sesquicentennial meeting in San Diego, CA.  He, together with Lindsay Holman and former Director Tom Elliott, were among the speakers; the texts of all the panel papers may be read on the Center’s website.  For the Archaeological Institute of America at this jointly held meeting Lindsay Holman and Richard Talbert also contributed “Maps for Texts: An Expanding Ancient World Mapping Center Resource” at the poster session.

At UNC the tour of the Center and overview of its initiatives which Lindsay Holman was asked to offer participants in Raleigh 400: A Conference on Sir Walter Raleigh Four Hundred Years After His Death (September 2018) gained an enthusiastic reception.  In April 2019, for a Digital Humanities Round Table at Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands), she delivered an invited paper exploring the applications and limitations of using digital cartography for the study of the ancient world with particular reference to the Center’s Maps for Texts.

Under the terms of the partnership agreement made with the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Roma Capitale, the Center commissioned a Queen’s University (Ontario, Canada) team headed by Prof. George Bevan to create the first-ever ultra high-resolution photogrammetric image of the wall in Rome on which the Great Marble Map (Forma Urbis) was mounted in the Severan period.  Despite the intervention of successive obstacles great and small (by no means all forseeable), this remarkable fundamental step towards transforming productive study of the Map was successfully accomplished.  The collaboration of Prof. Elizabeth Wolfram Thill (Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis) for the purpose was invaluable (see further her paper for the “Mapping the Classical World Since 1869” panel mentioned above).  Thereafter the quality of the wall-image soon demonstrated how essential it is also to create 3-D images of corresponding quality for each of the approximately 1,200 surviving Map fragments.  As a further dimension of their partnership, the Center anticipates securing the Sovrintendenza’s authorization to commission this major advance, which should again involve Elizabeth Wolfram Thill as well as expert IUPUI colleagues.

This year the Center’s workforce of two graduate students (Gabriel Moss, Peter Raleigh) and four undergraduates (Leah Hinshaw, Kimberly Oliver, Peter Streilein, Hania Zanib) performed so ably that the three departures on graduation now imminent cause severe and much regretted loss – Peter Raleigh (PhD), Leah Hinshaw and Kimberly Oliver (both BA).  Fortunately, Lindsay Holman will continue as Director for 2019-2020.

Lindsay Holman

Richard Talbert

5-1-2017 to 4-30-2018

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER (http://awmc.unc.edu)

This year too has been an extremely active one for the Center.  Not only did the range of ongoing activities continue very productive, but it also expanded, especially in collaboration with external partners.

The Center continued to create a wide variety of commissioned maps, for both publications and a museum exhibit.   Among the large commissions were nine maps for Fred Naiden’s Soldier, Priest, and God, six for Taco Terpstra’s Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean: Private Order and Public Institutions, five for Lukas De Blois’ Image and Reality of Roman Imperial Power in the Third Century AD: Impact of War, and four for the antiquities collection of the University Museum, Oxford, MS.

As part of the longstanding collaboration with the Pleiades Project at New York University, Center staff participated in several Pleiades educational workshops.  Director Lindsay Holman and Associate Director Gabriel Moss led tutorials on how to utilize Pleiades and mapping applications at the Pelagios Commons and Pleiades Pedagogy Workshop organized at the University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, in November.  Both also spoke about the Center’s collaboration with Pleiades at the Workshop: “Turning Spatial with Pleiades: Creating, Teaching and Publishing Maps in Ancient Studies” during the January 2018 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Substantial effort was devoted to expanding the Maps for Texts series launched last year. As a result, the Center has finally been able to release an interactive map of Hierokles’ Synekdemos available as an online application. This map follows Ernest Honigmann’s edition of Hierokles’ text (Brussels, 1939) and serves to supersede his four unwieldy printed outline maps.  Using the Center’s Map Tiles as its base, the new map marks all cities and regions which may be identified and located with some confidence according to the Barrington Atlas.  The interactive map application is accompanied by a documented database of all place-names in the Synekdemos.  At year’s end, the Center’s map of Theophanes’ journeys between Hermopolis and Antioch (as recorded in Rylands papyri) was due for release in summer 2018, and a completed draft of Arrian’s Periplus of the Black Sea (made at 1:750,000 scale to match the Center’s Asia Minor in the Second Century C.E.) had been sent out for expert review; its release in fall 2018 can be confidently expected.  Meantime Gabriel Moss and Laura Roberson have continued work on the major undertaking of an interactive map for books 2–6 of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History to accompany the new English translation in preparation by Brian Turner (former Center Director) and Richard Talbert.

This year the Center expanded its partnership (at no cost) with the United States Committee for the Blue Shield.  Numerous well-qualified interns (Olwen Blessing, Lacey Hunter, Alexa Kennedy, Ad Lane, Kurt Nelson, Kimberly Oliver, Michael Purello and Kelly Williams) assisted with this project under the direction of Gabriel Moss and Alexander Griffin (Assistant Director of the Cultural Heritage Protection Project).  These interns worked on developing “no-strike lists”, inventories of cultural heritage sites in active or potential war zones, to be utilized by USCBS which in turn coordinates with the United States and allied militaries to protect these sites from human destruction.

Lindsay Holman and Peter Raleigh assisted with preparation of a new book by Richard Talbert Challenges of Mapping the Classical World (Routledge, forthcoming fall 2018), in which the Barrington Atlas and the Center feature prominently.  Work was also done to assist Talbert’s initiative to study the mapping of Asia Minor during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, by Hienrich and Richard Kiepert in particular.  Peter Raleigh produced interactive locator outlines for Heinrich’s Specialkarte vom Westlichen Kleinasien and Richard’s Karte von Kleinasien, while Leah Hinshaw made a start on the complex challenge of identifying and annotating the changes introduced for each successive edition of Richard’s Karte.

The Center is now close to finalizing a three-year partnership agreement with the Sovraintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Roma Capitale, Italy, for joint documentation and study of Rome’s Forma Urbis, the Severan Marble Map or Plan of Rome; a location in which to display its fragments is being actively developed.  Also collaborating in this partnership are Profs. Ryan Shaw (UNC School of Information and Library Science) and Elizabeth Wolfram Thill (Director, Program in Classical Studies, Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis).  The Center has already commissioned a key step for advancing this initiative: the creation (upcoming) of a very high-resolution photogrammetric image of the wall on which the Map was originally displayed.

In order to assist planning for Routledge’s revised edition of Richard Talbert’s Atlas of Classical History (1985) by co-editors Benet Salway and Hans van Wees (both at University College London), Lauren Taylor drafted several models which demonstrate – among other improvements only made practical by digital cartography – the potential of rethinking the scale and scope of certain maps in the original edition and of adding color.  During a visit to the U.K. in April for various purposes, Lindsay Holman was able to discuss these ongoing experiments rewardingly with both co-editors.

Given the success of the conference held by the Center in 2016, plans have been developed for another.  It is scheduled for November 2018, and is sponsored jointly with Duke University’s Departments of Classical Studies and of Art and Art History and Visual Studies.

The contributions made by the Center’s expanded workforce this year have been outstanding: two graduate students (Gabriel Moss, Peter Raleigh) and five undergraduates (Dara Baldwin, Leah Hinshaw, Andie Migden, Laura Roberson, Lauren Taylor).  After two years as cartographic assistants, Laura and Lauren are both now graduating and will be greatly missed.  Having completed a remarkable first year as Director, Lindsay Holman will continue in this position for 2018–2019.

Lindsay Holman

Richard Talbert

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER

With Elizabeth Robinson continuing as Acting Director and the opportunity to secure Ross Twele as Cartographic Assistant for both semesters, the Center has been able to achieve considerably more this year than originally anticipated. A substantial number of commissions to create custom-designed maps were accepted, in particular a complex group spread over ten pages for a monograph on the Alexandrian geographer and polymath Eratosthenes by Duane Roller (Princeton University Press, forthcoming fall 2009). The year’s principal accomplishment, however, has been a fundamental rethinking of the long delayed ‘wall maps’ project and its advancement at an accelerated pace almost to completion. Former Director Tom Elliott had drafted a prototype map for this project as far back as 2005, and more recently Robinson had made some progress assisted by Cary Barber and UNC GIS Librarian Amanda Henley. Even so, certain major conceptual concerns had still to be resolved and related technical obstacles overcome. In both instances satisfying solutions have now been found and the results are outstanding. In particular, a set of seven maps has been settled upon, with the prospect of others to come left open. Two cover the ancient Near East and Egypt at successive periods, and one each the Aegean, Italy, Alexander the Great’s world, the eastern Mediterranean with special reference to the New Testament, and the Roman empire. All are designed as wall maps for instructors’ use in large survey courses. However, they are also to be offered as digital products for projection, and as such are extraordinarily attractive and versatile. Physical landscape has been painstakingly returned to its ancient appearance, and an effective color palette developed. The sheer quantity of data to be manipulated (the largest map covers 30 sq. ft.) presented a succession of daunting challenges, but these have all been met. No comparable set of large maps for use in ancient history classes exists; the latest published dates to 1989 (just prior to the development of digital cartography) and is no match for the Center’s seven.

The extensive digital map work commissioned by Richard Talbert for the electronic version of his book Rome’s World: the Peutinger Map Reconsidered was completed by Sarah Willis. The book has been delivered to Cambridge University Press and has gone into production. With Talbert as adviser, Gannon Hubbard exploited the unique collection of resources and materials at the Center to develop his History honors thesis “Engravers and mapmakers: two contrasting approaches to reproducing the Peutinger map.”

The Center was associated with the ‘Concordia’ project funded by a NEH/JISC Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant; this has principally involved the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College, London, and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. At the latter, major roles were played by Tom Elliott together with AWMC’s former software developer Sean Gillies. Concordia’s goal has been to prepare approximately one thousand Roman inscribed texts from western Libya (Tripolitania) for publication in association with maps and other research tools, not least as a demonstration of digital interoperability.

At the year’s end Elizabeth Robinson is relinquishing the Acting Directorship in order to pursue dissertation research in Rome and Larino (Molise) with the support of the Archaeological Institute of America’s prestigious Olivia James Traveling Fellowship for 2009-10. Her initiative, efficiency and multiple talents will be much missed. Brian Turner takes her place; having previously worked for the ongoing Pleiades project, he is already familiar with many of the Center’s activities. Ross Twele is taking up a departmental teaching assistantship, but expects to continue some mapmaking work at the Center.

Elizabeth Robinson, Richard Talbert

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

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER

This has been a year of successful transition for the Center, set in motion above all by the award of full funding ($389,883) by the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Division (Research and Development) for a two-year project to create Pleiades: an Online Workspace for Ancient Geography. Built atop the open-source Plone Content Management System, and web-hosted by the Stoa Consortium at the University of Kentucky, Pleiades is designed to provide eventual on-line access to all information about Greek and Roman geography assembled by the Classical Atlas Project for the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. At the same time Pleiades enables large-scale collaboration in order to maintain and diversify this dataset. Through an innovative combination of internet technology, open-content approaches (resembling those used by Wikipedia) and rigorous academic editorial review, Pleiades empowers anyone – from established experts to informed students of antiquity – to contribute new knowledge and insights, descriptive essays, bibliographic updates, geographic coordinates, and more. After approval by an international Steering Committee of established experts, these contributions become a permanent, author-attributed part of future publications and data services at the Center. More broadly, Pleiades is intended to serve as a model for the many other fields in the humanities and social sciences that face the problem of keeping immense bodies of fundamental reference materials current. For further information, visit http://www.unc.edu/awmc/

Richard Talbert serves as Principal Investigator for the Pleiades Project as well as Acting Director of the Center. Tom Elliott has relinquished this directorship in order to take a full-time leading role in the development of Pleiades. A highly qualified Software Applications Analyst, Sean Gillies, has been hired to work alongside him. The Center Director’s position is to be filled as soon as practicable, subject as always to funding.

The work of the Center in general, and of Pleiades in particular, formed the subject of a special feature by Barrymore Scherer in The Wall Street Journal on March 1, timed to coincide with National Humanities Day 2006. Graham Shepherd and David O’Brien have continued to contribute to preparation of Richard Talbert’s Peutinger Map database, which is now nearing completion after overcoming multiple complexities and obstacles. Last but not least, the Center’s website and the maps available there receive as heavy worldwide use as ever, resulting in warm expressions of appreciation from all sides.

Richard Talbert, Director

ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER

The College of Arts and Sciences, together with the Departments of History and Classics, continue to provide essential support for core operations of the Ancient World Mapping Center while our endowment fund matures. These bridging funds permit the Center to expand its unique role in promoting cartography, historical geography and geographic information science worldwide as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies. Moreover, this support ensures that the Center will live up to the evident potential acknowledged by generous endowment contributions from Carolina alumni like Jim Alexandre and Mark Clein, as well as the Stavros S. Niarchos, Barrington, Gladys Krieble Delmas and Samuel H. Kress foundations, which are matched by funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. What follows here is a brief summary of the year’s advances.

This past spring, TOM ELLIOTT contributed to the History Department’s undergraduate teaching mission by leading a 120-student section of History 14, which surveys the ancient histories of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Incorporating a significant geographic component into the course – and benefiting greatly from the assistance of two outstanding teaching assistants (Jacob Burt and Joshua Westgard) – Dr. Elliott enjoyed leading his students through 8,000 years of history on three different continents. Continuing the Center’s tradition of high-quality contributions to pedagogy at Carolina and beyond, Dr. Elliott presented a paper at the spring meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in which he outlined the Center’s plans for a new, high-quality series of classroom wall maps for ancient history. The presentation, together with a large prototype map of “Julio-Claudian Italy,” generated significant interest and positive comments. The Center has opened preliminary collaboration discussions with the cartographic unit at MapQuest.com. Dr. Elliott’s paper is scheduled for publication in The Occasional Papers of the American Philological Association’s Committee on Ancient History. The prototype map was also a central focal point of the display mounted by Richard Talbert for National Humanities Advocacy Day 2005 in Washington, D.C.

The Center’s contributions to research also accelerated during the past year. Work in progress includes: digital and print publications of ancient documents, a project to map the incidence of identifiable Celtic place names and personal names in surviving Greek and Roman documents, and a potential project involving Roman roads in Asia Minor. In conjunction with these projects, Dr. Elliott presented at workshops and participated in panel discussions at New York University (epigraphic documents from Aphrodisias in Turkey), the British School in Rome (databases of ancient Roman documents) and Duke University (the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri). He also played key roles in the planning of colloquia to be held in the coming year at Brown University and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. The Center also expanded its involvement in Talbert’s research project on Peutinger’s Roman map by providing computational resources, technical oversight and cartographic development. One of the Center’s undergraduate cartographic technicians is presently collaborating with Talbert and Elliott to produce a high-quality modern map detailing the ancient map’s content. Procedures developed at the Center for digitizing the maps and data from the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World are now moving into an operational mode; distribution discussions with Princeton University Press and the American Philological Association are slated for fall 2005. Dr. Elliott has opened preliminary consultation with staff members at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, where he has been named an External Fellow, on a collaborative effort to produce high quality maps of the city of Rome. The Center continues to seek grant funding for the Pleiades Project, which will create an international community of scholars, teachers, students and enthusiasts to collaborate in updating and expanding the spatial and historical reference information maintained by the Center.

Between 1 July 2004 and 1 June 2005, the Map Center’s website logged over 300,000 discrete visitors (not counting automated web search systems), with a weekday average of nearly 1,000 visitors per day. As in previous years, these visitors hailed from all over the globe, with the top ten countries being the U.S.A., Hungary, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands. The most visited portion of the website remains the “Maps for Students” section, which provides free, high-quality maps for educational purposes. In the past year, Dr. Elliott added a number of the maps he prepared for his History 14 class to the collection. We regularly receive emails from “Maps for Students” users, suggesting new maps to include and thanking us for the materials we make available, for example:

I would like to thank you for publishing on-line maps of such high quality. I study archaeology at Belgrade University, in Serbia. My university is poorly supplied, and I couldn’t get a precise idea of the late Roman empire in geographical scale until now. Thank you so much for your help. – M.D

Tom Elliott, Director