Identity, position, claim
An explicit Pleiades ID can connect two records. A curated relationship can connect a city description with a harbour feature. Neither makes their coordinate precision, date or interpretation identical.
Place names alone do not merge records. Unlocated reports remain searchable without a fabricated point.
Pleiades: places, locations, names and connections ↗Dates retain their subjects
Source dates, approximate archaeological phases, photographic capture and publication are kept distinct. Voyage placeholders and gazetteer name envelopes are not converted into exact operating dates.
The date comparison keeps records without a numeric band visible by default. It compares supplied bands; it cannot recover missing chronology.
Figures retain their authors
The three-site figure reader preserves publication locators, earlier image credits, licence wording and interpretive limits. The IIIF manifest carries those credits with each canvas.
Local notes target image positions; they do not register an ancient wall in geographic space.
IIIF Presentation API 3 ↗
Structured adapters cover the listed datasets. The complete family catalogue also connects fragment editions, fish products, regional worlds and other readers through their original entrypoints. Their full corpora are not recoded into one universal schema.
Interface precedents
Pleiades informed the separation of identity and location. Recogito informed contextual notes and exportable annotations. IIIF informed figure ordering and attribution. Leaflet and WAI guidance informed map alternatives and keyboard-operated tabs.
Recogito documentation · Leaflet accessibility · WAI tabs
Questions to develop
When do descriptions of access, sailing conditions or transshipment provide stronger ecological evidence than a basin plan? How far can later sediment evidence test a textual explanation? Which comparisons require a shared phase before they become persuasive?
The Red Sea and Indian Ocean path brings these questions to the centre of the workspace.
Coverage and reuse boundaries
Place ecology is derived from gazetteer types; missing classifications are not evidence of missing environments. Imported source coding is identified as such and has not all been independently reverified.
Restricted Carthage images remain in their source reader’s permission workflow. Three modern production contrast cases are excluded from the ancient map.