Project Summary
This project is hosted by: Institute of Classical Studies
- Research interests:
- History, Literatures in a modern language, Medieval History
- Regions:
- Africa, Africa, Asia, Asia, Australasia, Australasia, Europe, Europe, Middle East, Middle East
- Project period:
- 07-Jan-2016 - 30-Nov-2016
- Project categories:
- Digital grant
- Project summary:
This project serves as a pilot for a larger initiative to research and record sources for Arabic, Ottoman and other later names for Mediterranean sites of classical interest, with a view to extending our knowledge of the lives of classical sites into the Mediaeval and Islamic, and indeed modern, eras, and widening the idea of the “ancient world” beyond Greek and Roman cultures and languages. Among other benefits, this will increase the discoverability of gazetteer records by extending their current name associations from Ancient Greek/Latin + modern (English/Italian/Greek) to include Mediaeval (Arabic/Ottoman) and modern (Arabic/Turkish). The two core deliverables of this project will be: (1) the addition of Arabic and other non-Greco-Latin placenames to the existing (or in some cases new) Pleiades records for classical places, all of which will be licensed as CC-BY; (2) the digitization and upload to Recogito of Arabic maps and/or manuscripts, for which we will seek the most liberal licensing possible (CC-0 or CC-BY), and actively encouraging the annotation and georesolution of names against gazetteer ids. This enriched and more diverse data will be fully available under open licenses, and any scripts we write will be published as open source code under the most liberal GPL or comparable licence. The data will be of value not only to individual communities with interest in particular areas at particular times, but will help to break down the barriers between classical and nonclassical parts of the Pelagios/Linked Pasts ecosystem. It is also worth noting that the inclusion of later and especially Arabic names for classical places has been identified as a serious desideratum by the Pleiades editorial board.
Management Details
Lead researcher & project contact:
| Name | Position | Institute | Organisation | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mr Gabriel Bodard | Reader in Digital Classics | Institute of Classical Studies | SAS | gabriel.bodard@Sas.ac.uk |