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Data for download

Creators: Sean Gillies
Contributors: Brian Turner, Tom Elliott
Copyright © The Contributors. Sharing and remixing permitted under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (cc-by).
Last modified Jan 30, 2024 06:22 AM
Get quarterly numbered releases, as well as regular shapshots of all Pleiades resources, available in multiple formats including JSON, CSV, KML, and RDF.

Regularly updated exports ("dumps") of the published items in the Pleiades dataset may be downloaded in the formats described below.

The on-line resources under http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/ remain the canonical versions; the contents of the various export formats varies (see further below). The recently modified page or its corresponding RSS feed are the best ways to track what is changing.

Quarterly Numbered Archival Releases

We encourage use and citation of these numbered releases for scholarly work that will be published in static form. All of the components described in the "Single-Format Snapshots" section below are collected and released quarterly via GitHub in a single numbered version. These releases are archived and disseminated via the following third parties:

GitHub users can also fork the repository, which is updated most work days with the latest changes: https://github.com/isawnyu/pleiades.datasets

Single-Format Snapshots

Pleiades Data for GIS (CSV)

Also known as "the GIS package", this collection of CSV files is designed to be GIS-ready and has been tested in QGIS.

CAVEAT: Microsoft Excel (even recent versions) does not reliably read the CSV files in this package (it incorrectly parses columns when encountering embedded HTML in individual fields, for example). In addition to QGIS, Libre Office and Apple Numbers reportedly do not exhibit this problem.

Get more information and download the latest version at https://atlantides.org/downloads/pleiades/gis/.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

This is the only comprehensive dump. It contains all attributes of all place, name, location, and connection objects in the database that have been published.

Each morning, a single JSON file for all published places is written to a JSON file. JSON is a widely used, well-known format that is popular for use in web applications and other programming tasks. We keep a week's worth of files, deleting older ones. The file named pleiades-places-latest.json.gz will always get you the most recent version. Note also that those previously published place resources that have been withdrawn and moved to the "errata" section of the site are dumped to a separate json file.

NB: JSON serializations of data for individual places can be had from links on the place pages, such as http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885/json for Athens, or by a content-negotiated request for the resource http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885#this.

Download the latest version at https://atlantides.org/downloads/pleiades/json/.

Legacy Comma-Separated Values (CSV)

This is the original Pleiades export dump, still in operation for backward compatibility. Try "Pleiades Data for GIS (CSV)" first; it is probably a better fit for your needs.

Each morning, tables summarizing the published locations, names, and places are written to compressed CSV files. CSV is a widely used, well-known format that can be used by many computer programs. We keep a week's worth of files, deleting older ones. The files named pleiades-*-latest.csv.gz will always get you the most recent versions.

Users of these files will want to be aware of the following documentation:

Download the latest version at https://atlantides.org/downloads/pleiades/dumps/

Keyhole Markup Language (KML)

Suitable for use in Google Earth, QGIS, and other KML-capable software.

CAVEAT:  at present, the KML export uses for its coordinates the "Representative Point" from any place that has published locations. It does not include a representative point for places that have no published locations, but for which a representative point is calculated by Pleiades on the basis of connected places. If you want comprehensive data, please use the Pleiades JSON export. We hope to address this deficiency in a future release.

Information about all mappable places are read from our database and written to a zipped KML (KMZ) file each morning. We keep a week's worth of files and delete older ones. The KML format is well-documented on the Library of Congress Digital Formats website.

NB: KML serializations of data for individual places can be had from links on the place pages, such as http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885/kml for Athens, or by a negotiated request for the resource http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885#this.

Download the latest version at https://atlantides.org/downloads/pleiades/kml/

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

The latest data for all places, errata, authors, place types, and time periods is available for download in Turtle (Terse RDF Triple Language). This is a gzip-compressed, TAR archive. Previous RDF dumps are also available.  RDF dumps are updated weekly on Sundays.

NB: RDF serializations of data for individual places — in both Turtle and RDF/XML syntax — can be had from links on the place pages, such as http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885/turtle for Athens, or by a negotiated request for the resource http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885#this. Please see the README in https://github.com/isawnyu/pleiades-rdf for a description of the RDF and the vocabularies and ontologies used.

Download the latest version at at https://atlantides.org/downloads/pleiades/rdf/.

Derived and Enhanced Versions

Pleiades GeoJSON

A GeoJSON version of published *Pleiades* places is generated regularly from the CSV export using code developed by Ryan Baumann (Duke University Libraries). Note that it is an abridged dataset: all published places are represented, but only a subset of the attribute data is included. For comprehensive data, please make use of the full *Pleiades* JSON dataset.

Pleiades Plus

Pleiades Plus (also known as Pleiades+) is an experimental machine alignment between Pleiades place resources and content in the GeoNames gazetteer. It pairs Pleiades Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) with GeoNames URIs when a given pair seems likely to identify the same place. This alignment was conceived and prototyped by Leif Isaksen (Pelagios Project) under the auspices of the Google Ancient Places project (you can read the original announcement from 2011 on the GAP Blog). The current version is produced periodically by Ryan Baumann (Duke University Libraries). Code and data are available from https://github.com/ryanfb/pleiades-plus. There is also an essential README file.