I see that there's a call for papers out for the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, February 19-21, 2026: “Premodern Mapping Today”.

Deadline to submit abstracts: July 30, 2025. Details and contact: https://www.rsa.org/forms/FormResponseView.asp?id=9A68C625-38D4-4979-9C72-413F33608254

"We invite abstracts addressing any aspect of mapping in the premodern world (pre-1700), from any mapping tradition. We welcome papers of any kind, from those that address a single map, text, or object to those that address broad questions in the theory or historiography of maps and mapping. We are especially interested in papers that push scholarly conversations about maps and mapping in novel directions, including work that will eventually appear in collections or monographs."

A story (on Medium) about the Digital South Caucasus Collection (DCSS) within the #ISAWNYU library's "Ancient World Digital Library": https://medium.com/@nyulibraries/building-bridges-across-the-caucasus-41589139fa4f

The DCSS is an "open-access portal [that] came online this spring, offering nearly 40,000 digitized pages of rare scholarship on the ancient cultures of the South Caucasus, a region that today includes the modern countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. [This piece also addresses] ... a deeper story, one about a geographically scattered scholarly community, a coalition of libraries, archaeologists, and researchers, and a shared determination to give an understudied region the digital infrastructure it deserves."

How do we know the ancient names of ancient places? There are many sorts of sources.

Sometimes, accounting documents or fragments thereof survive and sometimes they contain lists of estates. Often, these names are difficult or impossible to identify with specific places. But not always.

Here's a newly published one on papyrus, probably written in in the late sixth or early seventh century CE, probably at Herakleopolis in Egypt. The modern authors of the article have not only provided a text, but also a commentary that connects what can be connected of the toponyms to other published work.

La’da, Csaba A., and Amphilochios Papathomas. “A New Greek Papyrus Fragment of an Account and a List of Toponyms from the Late Antique Herakleopolites.” TYCHE – Beiträge Zur Alten Geschichte, Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 38 (2023). https://doi.org/10.25365/tyche-2023-38-7.

#PleiadesGazetteer sneak peek!

We'll release our usual "Last Week" summary blog post on Monday, but meantime here's the first fruits of what's likely to be a long, slow project: completing and refining Barrington Atlas coverage in North Africa. In the last few days, @serviliusahala has reviewed and published new and updated records I prepared for 18 places in modern Algeria, mostly north and east of modern Bordj Bou Arreridjj: https://pleiades.stoa.org/search?Cites=%22BAtlas+31+%22&created%3Alist%3Adate=2025%2F05%2F23&created_usage=range%3Amin&portal_type%3Alist=Place&review_state%3Alist=published

Many of these are unexcavated and/or heavily spoliated sites that were cataloged by Stéphane Gsell in the *Atlas Archéologique de l’Algérie* (Algiers, Paris: 1911) with only then-modern or no associated toponymy. They were subsequently added to the relevant Barrington Atlas maps without labels or individual directory entries... 1/?

Pleiades Datasets 4.1 has been released.

Get the official distribution: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15540082

Version 4.1 - 28 May 2025: 41,480 place resources

Since release 4.0.1 of pleiades.datasets on 6 February 2025, the Pleiades gazetteer published 287 new and 2,757 updated place resources, reflecting the work of Jeffrey Becker, Sarah Bond, Catherine Bouras, Anne Chen, Birgit Christiansen, Matthew Clark, Stefano Costa, Anthony Durham, Tom Elliott, Margherita Fantoli, E.W.B. Fentress, Güner Girgin, Maxime Guénette, Greta Hawes, Brady Kiesling, Chris de Lisle, Sean Manning, Gabriel McKee, John Muccigrosso, Jamie Novotny, Gethin Rees, Rosemary Selth, R. Scott Smith, Nicolas Souchon, Néhémie Strupler, Richard Talbert, Clifflena Tiah, and Scott Vanderbilt. As a result, this release provides documentation for 41,480 place resources.

#ancientGeography #ancientHistory #archaeology #DH #gazetteers #HGIS

noted by way of @archaeoten

Henig, Martin, Soffe Grahame, Kate Adcock, and Anthony King, eds. Villas, Sanctuaries and Settlement in the Romano-British Countryside. Archaeopress Archaeology, 2023. https://doi.org/10.32028/9781803273808.

Original post (no alt text for included image of cover volume, which overlays title and author information atop a black-and-white illustration of a rectangular complex with two interior courtyards situated in a hilly landscape): https://archaeo.social/@archaeoten/114585275115712591

The changelogs for March and April 2025 have been posted to the web as follows:

March 2025: https://atlantides.org/changelogs/2025/03/

During the month of April 2025, the Pleiades editorial college published 64 new and 613 updated place resources, reflecting the work of Jeffrey Becker, Catherine Bouras, Stefano Costa, Tom Elliott, Maxime Guénette, Greta Hawes, Brady Kiesling, Chris de Lisle, Gabriel McKee, John Muccigrosso, Jamie Novotny, Rosemary Selth, R. Scott Smith, Nicolas Souchon and Richard Talbert.

April 2025: https://atlantides.org/changelogs/2025/04/

During the month of March 2025, the Pleiades editorial college published 85 new and 670 updated place resources, reflecting the work of Jeffrey Becker, Matthew Clark, Anthony Durham, Tom Elliott, Güner Girgin, Maxime Guénette, Greta Hawes, Brady Kiesling, Chris de Lisle, Sean Manning, Gethin Rees, Rosemary Selth, R. Scott Smith, Nicolas Souchon and Scott Vanderbilt.

Full history:

All prior annual and monthly change logs (since 2009) may be browsed at https://atlantides.org/changelogs/.

#ancientGeography #ancientHistory #archaeology

Yesterday I was ranting about getting coordinates right in your archaeological journal articles if you're going to publish coordinates.

Today I found this under-cited gem of a thesis, which has incredibly accurate coordinates in it:

Laoues, Souad. “L’aqueduc de la tribu fenaia, un patrimoine archéologique en péril.” Mémoire de Magister, spécialité architecture, Université Mouloud MAMMERI de Tizi-Ouzou, 2015. https://dspace.ummto.dz/handle/ummto/815.

Some Pleiades entries are getting a glow-up!

Pleiades gazetteer sneak peek (2025-05-22):

Since Monday 19 May, we've published 2 new and 64 updated place resources. We'll do our next "Last week in Pleiades" blog post on Tuesday, 27 May, but meantime here's a sneak peek at the two additions:

Floga Sculpture Workshop (Paros)
https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/306693502
Located at modern Floga in the town of Paros, this residential structure, dating to the 5th/4th centuries BCE, underwent a number of subsequent modifications and took on the additional role of a sculpture workshop in the Hellenistic period. Creators: Tom Elliott. Contributors: Jeffrey Becker. Published by: Jeffrey Becker.

Rogmorum
https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/701996832
Rogmorum is a toponym included on the Peutinger map, and it is connected to roadways radiating from Tavium toward the east. Wilson discusses whether or not Rogmorum is a corruption of Trocmorum, an epithet connected with Tavium. The compilers of the Barrington Atlas did not include this place on map 63. Creators: Jeffrey Becker, Richard Talbert. Published by: Tom Elliott.

You can view a continuously updated map (and link to a feed) of all the most recently modified entries in Pleiades at https://pleiades.stoa.org/home

#ancientGeography #ancientHistory #archaeology

Had some fun today improving the "Fundus Petrensis" entry in the Pleiades gazetteer (h/t @serviliusahala for speedy review and publication).

https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/305129

"As attested by an inscription found on the site in 1901 and a passage in Ammianus, this fortified country estate was built by one Sammac, son of Nubel, whose brother Firmus assassinated him and raised a revolt against the Romans in the 370s CE. The modern placename associated with the site is M'lakou; it is located near Ighzar Amoqrane in Algeria's Kabylia province."

More fun stuff (including the "aqueduct tunnel from hell") currently in the review queue.

My people. Nonius Datus would like your attention again for a few minutes.

Laoues, Souad, Nassereddine Attari, and Stéphane Mauné. “Reconstruction of the Route and Characterization of the El Habel Tunnel of the Toudja Roman Aqueduct (Algeria) Using 3D Laser Scanning Technology.” Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 34 (September 1, 2024): e00352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.daach.2024.e00352.

Last Week in Pleiades (14-21 April 2025)

Last week the Pleiades editorial college published 22 new and 173 updated place resources, reflecting the work of Jeffrey Becker, Tom Elliott, Maxime Guénette, Greta Hawes, Chris de Lisle, Gabriel McKee, John Muccigrosso, R. Scott Smith and Richard Talbert.

A full list of changes and additions, including change summaries, short descriptions, links to the corresponding gazetteer entries, and an overview map may be viewed on the blog at https://pleiades.stoa.org/news/blog/last-week-in-pleiades-14-21-april-2025

#ancientGeography #gazetteers #ancientHistory #archaeology

Watching the name "Lyncus" (Lynkos) slide around in press reports riffing on the press release about recent excavations at the "Gradishte" site near modern Crnobuki in North Macedonia.

This name of a region is morphing through careless language into a possible name of the ancient settlement (no!). And then there's all the breathless AtG hype ... it's kinda nauseating.

In the Pleiades gazetteer:

Ancient site at modern Crnobuki: https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/965485210

Ancient region of Lynkos: https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/481903

A colleague has just alerted me to an "ARIT lecture on the new data re the Thera eruption tomorrow April 16 at noon EST: 'The Late Bronze Age Thera Eruption! New Perspectives from
Çeşme – Bağlararası in Western Anatolia'. An online lecture with Dr. Vasıf Şahoğlu, Department of Archaeology and Ankara University Mustafa V. Koç Research Center for Maritime Archaeology (ANKÜSAM)
16 April 2025, 7 pm Turkey - noon EDT
To join online please register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/0Yur7TahTiWZRyOQJ1PnZQ#/registration

I see that "Connections and Divisions: Landscape Features of the Ancient World", the 17th Annual Graduate Student Conference in Classics at CUNY has been announced:

Friday 2 May 2025
9am - 6pm US Eastern Time
In-person & via Zoom

Register via the conference website: https://gscclassics.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Keynote by Dr. Prudence Jones (Montclair): "Fluid Borders: Rivers, Exile and Migration"

I see that Hélène Roelens-Flouneau has a review of the revised Atlas of classical history out in BMCR:

Hélène Roelens-Flouneau. “Review of: Atlas of Classical History.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Accessed April 9, 2025. https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.04.11/.

"In sum, it can be reasonably asserted that the revised edition of this atlas will continue to serve as an invaluable resource for both researchers and students for at least the next twenty years."

Shout-outs for the original editions and translations, the Barrington Atlas, for the CAWM map tiles, and for the Pleiades gazetteer (even if it undersells the latter quite a lot).

I've just had an email from Richard Talbert saying that yesterday his study “The Kieperts’ Asia Minor Ancient and Ottoman: Capstones of Route-Based Cartography” was published as a Supplementary Volume of the journal History of Classical Scholarship (accessible free): https://www.hcsjournal.org/ojs/index.php/hcs/article/view/SV10

It's the third and final component of a triad.  The other two components are a 2022 article in the same journal (https://www.hcsjournal.org/ojs/index.php/hcs/article/view/79) and a virtual exhibition (2022-23; https://arcg.is/PTCOm).

I just had an email from Gabe Moss at the Ancient World Mapping Center at UNC Chapel Hill alerting me to "the release of Livy Study Maps: Book 22, the latest addition to the Maps for Texts series."

More here: https://awmc.unc.edu/2025/03/20/livy-study-maps-book-22/

"... this set of twenty-three maps is designed for students and teachers working with Livy’s text, and offers detailed coverage of famous episodes such as the Battles of Lake Trasimene and Cannae, as well as of lesser-known campaigns from Book 22 of the History of Rome. The maps are available as free digital downloads under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 license."

New map application from the Ancient World Mapping Center at UNC Chapel Hill: The Geography of Pliny the Elder

"The Geography of Pliny the Elder compiles and maps the geographic data in Pliny's Natural History. The database, available for download from the ISAW website, includes some 6,500 unique entries, and this application maps all those entries that are locatable. Users can click on a feature or use the search function to find citations in Pliny and a link to a feature's associated Pleiades entry, where further data, much of it beyond the scope of Pliny, can be found."

https://pleiades.stoa.org/news/blog/new-from-awmc-the-geography-of-pliny-the-elder

#ancientGeography #classics #ancientHistory

Via the bsky account for Bob Consoli's Mycenean Atlas Project, we learn that he's just released an update:

"2 BA sites Deleted
6 Lat/Lon Changes
6 Accuracy Adjustments
6 Sites Modified
8 Bibliographic Sources Added
34 New BA Sites Added
106 New (modern) Features

The updates in today's database release mostly focus on the area around Vrokastro in Crete (Ierapetra). This is (mostly) based on the surveys of Barbara Hayden and L. Vance Watrous."

Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/mycenaeanatlas.bsky.social/post/3ljlgzrbyqc2c

Access to the MycAtl: https://www.helladic.info/