Ancient World Mapping Center

5-1-2022 to 4-30-2023 ANCIENT WORLD MAPPING CENTER (http://awmc.unc.edu)

The plan was that this should be a transitional year with minimal staff dedicated primarily to completing projects and readying the Center for a new phase. In large measure that goal has been achieved, with a high level of activity throughout the year, and several projects now thankfully finished or almost – in particular, the revised Atlas of Classical History co-edited by Richard Talbert, Lindsay Holman and Benet Salway. This underwent its arduous paging and proofing stages during the summer and fall. However, once all components in final form (xiv + 250 pages, 142 full-color maps) were eventually dispatched to printers in the US and Europe just before Christmas, Routledge’s publication of the Atlas soon had to be set back a month (to March 2023), because the US advance copies were found to be all in grayscale; so this flawed print-run had to be replaced by one in color. Altogether the revision provides powerful testimony to how rewardingly scholarship, resources and technology have advanced since the original edition appeared in 1985 (when color printing was out of the question !).

Also completed were all 28 maps made for the major collaborative work Geographers of the Ancient Greek World, edited by Graham Shipley; proofs are expected from Cambridge University Press during summer 2023. Around that time, too, the Center should release – in its online Maps for Texts series – Catholic and Donatist Bishoprics in North Africa around the Time of the Conference of Carthage, 411 C.E. (1:750,000 scale), together with two concisely annotated lists: Bishoprics Marked on the Map, and Bishoprics Missing from the Map for Lack of Evidence. This exceptionally extensive and complex map stems in the first instance from Serge Lancel’s magisterial analysis in his Actes de la Conférence de Carthage en 411 vol. IV (1991) and from the Barrington Atlas; the map also reflects subsequent scholarship and fresh discoveries, as well as integrating relevant entries in pleiades. Begun by Miguel Vargas and Lindsay Holman, the map now approaches completion thanks notably to expert advice given by Profs. Bruce Hitchner (Tufts University, MA) and Anna Leone (University of Durham, U.K.).

Intense effort enabled the Center to prepare, organize and deliver to Princeton University Library’s Geospatial and Information Center the several hundred maps and associated materials to be presented in the joint virtual exhibition Late Ottoman Turkey in Princeton’s Forgotten Maps, 1883-1923. This was launched in December as planned, with an impressive selection of both scans and original maps displayed at the Library, and an introductory talk there by Richard Talbert, accessible online. Even so, the great quantity of items to be presented in the innovative StoryMaps format by the Library’s already stretched staff made it impractical to launch the entire virtual exhibition as a single item. Instead, a division into five successive parts was devised, the first three of which can already be viewed, with the final two to follow during summer 2023. The three present: Kiepert maps; British mapping of Ottoman Turkey; and Greek and Italian mapping of Ottoman Turkey. The final two parts present mainly Ottoman maps. Earlier, the Center prepared the many figures for Richard Talbert’s related article “The exploration of Asia Minor: Kiepert maps unmentioned by Ronald Syme and Louis Robert,” published in the online journal History of Classical Scholarship vol. 4.

Two commissions were completed during the year: maps for Jeffrey Smith, The Corinthian War, 395-387 BC: The Twilight of Sparta’s Empire (Pen & Sword), and for Stephen Mitchell, The Christians of Phrygia from Rome to the Turkish Conquest (Brill). Two other commissions were nearing completion at year’s end: maps for John Donahue and Lee Brice (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Diet and Logistics in Greek and Roman Warfare, and for Michael Maas and Fay Yarbrough (eds.), Knowing Indigeneity in Rome and America: Comparative Perspectives in the Imperial Interface (University of Oklahoma Press). Permissions granted for use of the Center’s maps included one to Lauren Curtis for Imprints of Dance in Greek and Roman Antiquity / Improntas de Danza Antigua (UAM Ediciones), and another for Magarethe Billerbeck’s edition of Dionysius of Byzantium, Anaplous of the Bosporus (Schwabe); for licenses to adapt maps, one to Marcos Moyses for Emperors and Rhetoricians: Panegyric, Communication, and Power in the Fourth-Century Roman Empire (University of California Press). Demand for the Center’s Wall Maps has remained active, as also for its Asia Minor in the Second Century C.E.

By good fortune, a search for an ancient historian to join the Department of History faculty was at last authorized this year, and Henry Gruber appointed as assistant professor. While enthusiastic about the Center, he is understandably hesitant to commit to involvement with it at once. Richard Talbert will therefore remain in charge for 2023-2024, to be assisted again by Rachel Sarvey, who merits gratitude and praise for her versatile skills, creativity and perseverance. Talbert and Sarvey will now be joined (remotely, part-time) by Dr. Gabriel Moss, former Center director. His return is warmly welcomed. Among other benefits, it will facilitate the recruitment and training of several student assistants once again, and the resumption of a fuller program.

Richard Talbert

Rachel Sarvey