The center supports a variety of ongoing projects including:
Current Projects:
Antiquity À-la-carte
The Antiquity À-la-carte application is an interactive digital map of the ancient world built using open source software and data derived from The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World and Pleiades. The project seeks to make an interactive, manipulable map of the ancient Mediterranean world intended primarily for students and their instructors. The application allows for an extensive range of custom criteria that can tailor the map to meet almost any needs from the archaic to the late Roman periods. Furthermore all the data created for the map is freely downloadable for any non-commercial use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license.
A Map of Asia Minor Around 100 C.E.
AWMC is compiling a single sheet scholar’s map of Asia Minor at a scale of 1:750,000 around 100 C.E. Compiled by R. J. A. Talbert, B. D. Turner, J. A. Becker, R. Twele and R. Horne, the full-color map debuted as a draft version at the 2012 meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 6 January 2012. The map aims to depict Roman Asia Minor during the administration of the emperor Trajan. The leaflet that accompanied the map appears here.
The Birth of the Forum Romanum: a 3D Reconstruction of the Terrain of the Early City
Cartographic research assistant Steve Burges (UNC 2013) completed this project during his fourth undergraduate year at UNC and it was awarded highest honors by the Department of Classics. The project’s goal was to create a digital elevation model of the Roman Forum area, including parts of the Capitoline, Palatine, and Velia hills in the era of the Forum’s first pavement (ca. 650 B.C.). Excavation data, geological research, and modern LiDAR data combine to map this crucial period of Rome’s urbanization. Burges plans to continue developing the terrain model.
Benthos: Digital Atlas of Ancient Waters
Benthos is a new initiative to catalog and map ancient shipwrecks and more. The project will provide interactive maps of Mediterranean shipping, bathymetric data, and views of ancient coastlines. Like the Antiquity À-la-carte application, Benthos will be built upon open source software and produce data that will be freely accessible, usable, and modifiable for non-commercial use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license.
Completed Projects:
The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (2000)
The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World by Richard J.A. Talbert (ed.), (Princeton University Press, 2000, ISBN: 0-691-03169-X), is a comprehensive atlas spanning the entire period and spatial spread of Greek and Roman civilization. The double-folio-sized atlas contains 102 color topographic maps (many double spreads) and covers a vast arc of territory, from the British Isles and the Azores eastward across Europe and North Africa, up the Nile valley and through the Near East to Afghanistan and western China. Temporally, it covers the period from 1,000 BC/BCE to AD/CE 650. The atlas includes a CD-ROM version of the Map-by-Map Directory, which contains an introduction, bibliography and detailed listing of every feature appearing on every map. The detailed listing includes periods of cultural activity, modern names and locations, and bibliographic citations for each feature. The Map-by-Map Directory is also available separately in a two-volume, 1,400-page hardbound edition.
The atlas is the product of a 12-year project involving nearly 200 scholars and cartographers that was financed by over $4.5 million in federal and private donations. It rectifies the long-standing lack of a comprehensive Greek and Roman historical atlas: a tremendous impediment to research and teaching that had not been successfully addressed since the publication of Wm. Smith’s An Historical Atlas Of Ancient Geography, Biblical And Classical (London: John Murray, 1872-1874).
Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (2010)
The Peutinger Map is the only map of the Roman world to come down to us from antiquity. An elongated object full of colorful detail and featuring land routes across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, it was mysteriously rediscovered around 1500 and then came into the ownership of Konrad Peutinger, for whom it is named. Today it is among the treasures of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Richard J. A. Talbert’s Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered offers a long overdue reinterpretation and appreciation of the map as a masterpiece of both mapmaking and imperial Roman ideology. Talbert’s print volume is accompanied by a companion website that offers digital content related to the Peutinger Map. Elijah Meeks (Stanford) blogged about the content in 2011; a review from BMCR appears here.
Routledge Wall Maps for the Ancient World (2011; now out of print, but see here)
AWMC produced a series of seven wall maps designed for classroom use that are now available from Routledge. The wall maps series includes Greece and the Aegean in the 5th Century BCE, Egypt and the Near East 1200 – 500 BCE, Egypt and the Near East 3000-1200 BCE, The World of the New Testament and the Journeys of Paul, Greece and Persia in the Time of Alexander the Great, Italy in the Mid First Century CE, and The Roman Empire around 200 C.E. These full color maps provide both students and scholars with detailed and exacting geographic information of the ancient world. The wall maps in this series represent the culmination of AWMC’s Class Maps Project. ISBN-13: 9780415677417.
Commissioned Mapmaking
AWMC uses its vast cartographic and geographic resources to create maps, on commission, for scholarly publication. Map-making commissions are undertaken on a case-by-case basis and AWMC works closely with commissioning authors and editors to produce maps tailored to individual publications. Modest fees for production and licensing apply. Email the director for more information. You may consult a representative list of publications for which AWMC has produced maps here.
Collaborative Projects:
Pleiades: a Community-built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places
AWMC continues to collaborate with ISAW in managing and developing Pleiades. From their website: “Springing from the Classical Atlas Project and the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, Pleiades is a historical gazetteer and more. It associates names and locations in time and provides structured information about the quality and provenance of these entities. There is also a graph in Pleiades: names and locations are collected within places and these collections are associated with other geographically connected places. Pleiades also serves as a vocabulary for talking about the geography of the ancient world within Linked Data sets and is referenced by research projects such as Google Ancient Places and PELAGIOS.”
Resources for ancient world geography
Keeping abreast of the ever-expanding set of resources relevant to the geography and mapping of the ancient world is a Herculean task and this page does not attempt to do that, rather it aims to provide a basic set of initial references for the community. AWMC is always happy to consult with scholars and community members seeking to find certain, specialized resources.
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