Pleiades Project Blog
The Ancient Near East in Pleiades
We have recently accessioned some data derived from the Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients (TAVO) by an external project. Here is the status of the work, some context, and a call for volunteers.
Geographies of the Ancient City: Lessons to Learn from Diachronic Comparisons
A second call for papers has just been issued for this session at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (London, August 2014). Deadline for 300-word proposals is February 3, 2014.
Studying Identities in Rome and its Empire
A call for papers has been issued for a proposed colloquium sponsored by the Roman Provincial Archaeology Interest Group at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in New Orleans. The deadline for 500-word abstracts is February 21, 2014.
Richer Names Listings for Places
Pleiades place pages now provide more summary information for associated names.
New Pleiades Plus Matches Pleiades with GeoNames
Pleiades Plus is an experimental machine alignment between Pleiades place resources and content in the GeoNames Gazetteer.
Maintenance Downtime: May 29, 2014
Pleiades will be down for approximately an hour tonight.
Pleiades 2 Final Report
The Pleiades 2 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities ended in April 2014. A copy of the final report submitted to the NEH has been posted on the Pleiades website.
Stuart Dunn on Santorini
A blog post about the challenges of documenting changing volcanic landscapes in a digital gazetteer.
Sarah Bond joins editorial board
Pleiades has a new associate editor: Sarah E. Bond.
Ryan Horne Assumes Co-Managing Editor Role
The Pleiades Editorial College is pleased to announce that, concurrent with his role as Acting Director of the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ryan will work with Tom Elliott to manage the day-to-day and strategic operational aspects of Pleiades.
AWMC Launches Online Strabo's Geography Map
This interactive web application was designed to accompany Duane W. Roller’s new English translation of Strabo, just out from Cambridge University Press.
Mapping Spartacus: Using Pleiades in the Classroom
Pleiades provides geospatial data to dozens of digital projects, but it can also be used as a pedagogical tool in the classroom. Students in Sarah Bond's 'Ancient Financial Crisis' class used Pleiades data and the AWMC's Antiquity À-la-carte tool in order to make maps of the sites involved in the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE) led in part by Spartacus, and then mapped the course of the slave rebellion through the terrain of Republican Italy.
PhD opportunity on ‘Abstract Mapping for Ancient and Contemporary Cities’
New opportunity at the University of Kent, with potential for funding.
Elizabeth Robinson joins editorial board
Pleiades has a new associate editor: Elizabeth Robinson
AWMC to Host "Mapping the Past" Conference
The Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has just released a call for papers for a conference, to be held on April 8-9, 2016, on the applications of mapping and GIS to ancient history.
Pleiades in San Francisco (January 2016)
Members of the Pleiades team will be in San Francisco, CA from 6-10 January, 2016 during the Joint Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society for Classical Studies. Would you like to participate in a Pleiades workshop during that time? Please let us know!
Request for Comment: New Editorial Guidelines
A draft of a new policy document has been posted on Google Docs for review and comment by community members. Please help us perfect it.
Maintenance Downtime
Pleiades will be down for routine maintenance on Thursday, 25 February 2016 at 8pm US Mountain Standard Time.
AWMC Announces Conference Program and Workshop
The Ancient World Mapping Center will host a conference on "Mapping the Past: GIS Approaches to Ancient History", 7-9 April 2016 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The full schedule has now been announced, as well as a hands-on workshop introducing the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) aimed at students and faculty in History, Classics, Archaeology, and related disciplines.
Workshop: Linking the Ancient World
A Pleiades workshop with Sarah Bond at the University of Virginia.
Sarah Bond to Lead Workshop at UVA
On Tuesday, March 15, 2016, Associate Editor Sarah Bond will lead a two-hour workshop on Pleiades at the University of Virginia.
Workshop: Mapping the Ancient World
A Pleiades workshop with Tom Elliott at Harvard University.
Lecture: The Pleiades Data Model
Tom Elliott will deliver a Spatial Humanities Lecture Series lecture at Brown University on Friday, March 25, 2016.
Places, Spaces, Sites: Mapping Critical Intersections in Digital Humanities
The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas has issued a call for proposals for the 2016 DH Forum, which will take place on Saturday, October 1, following a full day of (gratis) Digital Humanities workshops on Friday, September 30.
Pleiades maintenance between 12 and 21 May 2016
The Pleiades 3 development team will be conducting software maintenance on the Pleiades website between now and the 21st of May.
Recent Improvements (May 2016)
On May 13th, 2016, the Pleiades 3 development team deployed a package of upgrades to the Pleiades website. This blog post summarizes the changes.
Downtime: Tuesday, 5 July 2016
At 8:30 a.m. US Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, 5 July 2016, the Pleiades website will be in read-only status for a feature upgrade.
New in Help: Conceptual Overview
This document describes the information structure of the gazetteer and explains what we mean when we say "place", "name", or "location".
New in Help: Modifying an existing resource
This new help topic (complete with up-to-date screenshots) provides step-by-step instructions for creating a personal working copy of a published place, name, location, or connection resource; modifying and saving the working copy; and submitting the working copy for review.
Last week in Pleiades (June 27 - July 10, 2016)
Bonus edition: two weeks of updates!
Downtime: Wednesday, 13 July 2016
At 8:00 a.m. US Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday, 13 July 2016, the Pleiades website will be in read-only status for a feature upgrade.
Downtime Complete
This morning's "read only" downtime is now complete.
July 2016 in Pleiades
During the month of July 2016, the Pleiades editors published new and/or updated information resources for 6 places, 11 locations, and 32 names.
Workshop on ancient world places
On 28 October 2016, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University will present a workshop, organized by Visiting Professor Gina Konstantopoulos, entitled "Hic Sunt Dracones: Creating, Defining, and Abstracting Place in the Ancient World".
New Progress Report Available
A copy of the most recent semiannual progress report submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities has been posted online.
ToposText Presentation in Athens, December 7
Brady Kiesling and colleagues will present an upgraded version of the ToposText mobile app at the Historical Library of the Laskaridis Foundation in Piraeus.
A Pleiades Documentation "Sprint"
Let's club together to update and improve the help section and other documentation for the Pleiades gazetteer.
Pleiades welcomes new reviewer: Müge Durusu
Pleiades has a new reviewer: Müge Durusu
Recent Updates to the Editorial Guidelines
Pleiades contributors should make note of recent additions and clarifications.
Updated help topic: Add a new connection between two places
"Connections" can be used to express relationships between two places in Pleiades. It's easy to add a new connection.
New help topic: Open Pleiades CSV in QGIS
Are you eager to use Pleiades data in a geographic information system? Here's a quick, introductory tutorial.
Introducing Geocollider
A new tool to help you match lists of placenames or geographic locations against the Pleiades gazetteer.
Pleiades Pompeii sprint
A Pleiades editing sprint in conjunction with the Ancient Graffiti Project (http://ancientgraffiti.org/)
Boston Workshop, January 2018
A three-hour workshop on Pleiades and related tools and techniques will be held in Boston on Friday, January 5, 1:45 - 4:45 pm.
Improving Reference Citations
Pleiades cites a wide variety of resources, both online and in print. New documentation and tools are making existing references better and easing the process of creating new ones.
Coverage (March 2019)
Pleiades documents 36,541 places as of this morning's JSON update.
Pleiades Datasets version 1.1
Archival copies of our latest set of platform-independent download data files have been published.
Maintenance 10 April 2019
Pleiades web services will undergo maintenance on Wednesday, 10 April 2019, between 11 am and 5 pm US Eastern Daylight Time.
Maintenance in Progress
Pleiades web services are currently undergoing maintenance.
Maintenance Complete: 10 April 2019
All scheduled maintenance for 10 April 2019 is now complete.
Nightly Exports Fixed
Incompleteness and validity problems with JSON, CSV, and KML exports are now resolved.
Pleiades Datasets 2.1 released
Latest copies of all our export formats in one handy package.
Pleiades Datasets 2.2 released (7 April 2020)
Latest copies of all our export formats in one handy package.
New Relationship Type: "crosses"
For relationships between bridges and the waterways or water bodies they span.
Pleiades Datasets 2.3 released (12 October 2020)
Latest copies of all our export formats in one handy package.
Maintenance 1 December 2020
Pleiades web services will undergo maintenance on Tuesday, 1 December 2020, between noon and 8 pm US Eastern Standard Time.
Pleiades Changelogs: 2021 Year-to-date
We have new code that produces a readable record of changes to place resources in the Pleiades gazetteer. January - May 2021 are now available.
Pleiades Website Availability 22-23 September 2021
Next Wednesday and Thursday, 22-23 September 2021, the Pleiades website will be moved to a new server. The transfer window begins at 5pm US Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday and will last until 5pm on Thursday. If the process goes quickly and smoothly, we may be able to close the transfer window earlier on Thursday.
Changelog Additions
Changelogs have been added for July - September 2021
Changelog Additions (October 2021)
The changelog has been posted for October 2021
Changelog Additions (November 2021)
The changelog has been posted for November 2021
Changelog Additions (December 2021)
The changelog has been posted for December 2021
Changelog Additions (January-May 2022)
The changelog service is back in operation. Change logs have been posted for January - May 2022.
System Improvements: March 2022
A report on results from our just-completed spring maintenance week. Most of the effort concentrated on improving our export data formats and enhancing the performance of the user interface used by our contributors and editors to create, curate, and publish Pleiades content; however, we did make one modification to the user interface that all our users will see.
Pleiades Updates for 31 March 2022
Two recently created and 6 updated place resources have been added to CSV and JSON downloads this morning and will be reflected in the next weekly RDF export (on Sunday).
Pleiades Updates for 1 April 2022
Five recently created and 8 updated place resources have been added to CSV and JSON downloads this morning and will be reflected in the next weekly RDF export (on Sunday).
Changelog: June 2022
The change log for June 2022 has been posted.
Last Week in Pleiades (27 June - 4 July 2022)
Last week we published 25 new place resources. In addition, 90 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (4-11 July 2022)
Last week we published 15 new place resources. In addition, 136 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (11-18 July 2022)
Last week we published 20 new place resources. In addition, 113 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (18-25 July 2022)
Last week we published 10 new place resources. In addition, 60 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (25 July - 1 August 2022)
Last week we published 25 new place resources. In addition, 131 existing place resources were updated.
Changelog: July 2022
The change log for July 2022 has been posted.
Last Week in Pleiades (1-8 August 2022)
Last week we published 18 new place resources. In addition, 91 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (8-15 August 2022)
Last week we published 9 new place resources. In addition, 74 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (15-22 August 2022)
Last week we published 8 new place resources. In addition, 40 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (22 - 29 August 2022)
Last week we published 1 new place resource. In addition, 57 existing place resources were updated.
NEW: Pleiades Data for GIS
This package of comma-separated values (CSV) files and documentation is meant to make Pleiades data more readily usable in GIS software than our other export formats.
Changelog: August 2022
The changelog for August 2022 has been posted: 367 new and updated places.
Last Week in Pleiades (29 August - 6 September 2022)
Last week we published 3 new place resources. In addition, 170 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (6-12 September 2022)
Last week we published 12 new place resources. In addition, 177 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (12-19 September 2022)
Last week we published 8 new place resources. In addition, 130 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (19-26 September 2022)
Last week we published 5 new place resources. In addition, 151 existing place resources were updated.
Changelog: September 2022
The changelog for September 2022 has been posted: 623 new and updated places.
Last Week in Pleiades (26 September - 3 October 2022)
Last week we published 2 new place resources. In addition, 130 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (3-10 October 2022)
Last week we published 2 new place resources. In addition, 55 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (10-17 October 2022)
Last week we published 5 new place resources. In addition, 91 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (17-24 October 2022)
Last week we published 3 new place resources. In addition, 109 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (24-31 October 2022)
Last week we published 1 new place resource. In addition, 15 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (31 October - 7 November 2022)
Last week we published 3 new place resources. In addition, 5 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (7-14 November 2022)
Last week we published 9 new place resources. In addition, 48 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (14-21 November 2022)
Last week we published 9 new place resources. In addition, 47 existing place resources were updated.
Last Week in Pleiades (21-28 November 2022)
Last week we published 7 new place resources. In addition, 41 existing place resources were updated.