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| Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire | |
|---|---|
| Name | Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire |
| Type | Digital historical atlas |
| Creator | Lund University (project lead) |
| Launched | 2004 |
| Language | English |
Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
The Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire is a scholarly geospatial project providing interactive maps of Ancient Rome and the wider Roman Empire across antiquity. It synthesizes archaeological, epigraphic and cartographic evidence to map sites, roads and provinces for researchers interested in Augustus, Tacitus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and related ancient sources. Developed in collaboration with institutions such as Lund University, the project complements resources like the Pleiades (gazetteer), ORBIS (model) and the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World.
The atlas offers a pan-Mediterranean and provincial perspective from Italia to Britannia, Hispania Tarraconensis, Aegyptus and Asia (Roman province), integrating place-names from Herodotus, Polybius, Livy and Ptolemy. It maps infrastructural elements such as the Via Appia, Via Egnatia, Antonine Wall and the network linking Rome with Antioch (ancient), Carthage, Alexandria, Constantinople and Londinium. The project situates archaeological complexes like Pompeii, Herculaneum, Bath (Roman) and Leptis Magna within modeled spatial frameworks.
Content includes georeferenced points for thousands of urban, military and religious sites—ranging from Vindolanda forts to provincial capitals like Lugdunum and Augusta Treverorum. The atlas overlays reconstructed roadways, harbor facilities such as Portus (ancient Rome), and landscape elements informed by studies of Tiber River hydrology and Mediterranean coastal change. Features permit temporal filtering to visualize growth and decline during eras associated with Julius Caesar, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and the Crisis of the Third Century. The interface supports thematic layers for monuments, episcopal sees linked to Council of Nicaea trajectories, and maritime routes informing trade between Ostia Antica, Ravenna, Tyre, Puteoli and Massalia.
The atlas aggregates datasets from archaeological surveys, epigraphic corpora like the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, cartographic compilations such as the Barrington Atlas, and digital gazetteers including Pleiades (gazetteer) and the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations. Scholarly inputs derive from studies by figures and institutions associated with Theodor Mommsen, R.P. Wright, Margareta Steinby and contemporary teams at Uppsala University and British Museum collaborating with regional projects in Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Greece. Methodology emphasizes coordinate standardization, feature attribution consistent with corpus entries for Tacitus, Annals and Suetonius, Lives, and uncertainty modeling for contested sites like Iotape and Regia.
Built using web mapping frameworks similar to OpenLayers and standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, the atlas serves geodata via Web Map Service and GeoJSON endpoints and interoperates with GIS clients such as ArcGIS and QGIS. The backend integrates spatial databases like PostGIS and adheres to linked-data practices compatible with Linked Open Data initiatives exemplified by Pelagios. Cross-referencing supports export to tools used in digital classics and Byzantine studies, enabling integration with resources on Late Antiquity, Byzantium and Medieval Europe.
Researchers employ the atlas for spatial analysis of imperial logistics in studies concerning Roman roads, supply chains to Hadrian's Wall, and settlement patterns around Po Valley. It supports pedagogy in courses on Roman history, Ancient Mediterranean archaeology and urbanism, and aids curators planning exhibitions at institutions like the British Museum, National Archaeological Museum, Naples and the Vatican Museums. Digital humanists combine its layers with prosopographical datasets for prosopography studies involving figures such as Gaius Julius Civilis and Flavius Aetius, while maritime historians link atlas routes with shipwreck catalogs from sites like Mare Nostrum and the Antikythera wreck.
Scholars cite the atlas for improving access to coordinated spatial data used in regional syntheses of Roman Britain, North Africa (Roman province) and Asia Minor. It has influenced projects on climate impacts in antiquity referencing Late Antique Little Ice Age research, and has been integrated into digital workflows alongside the ORBIS (model), the Harvard Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations and national archaeological databases maintained by English Heritage and Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. Critiques focus on challenges of place-name ambiguity in sources such as Ptolemy, Geography and the uneven archaeological coverage across provinces like Mauretania Tingitana and Mesopotamia.
Category:Digital atlases Category:Ancient Rome