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Reference: Attributes of Places

Creators: Tom Elliott
Contributors: Sean Gillies, Jeffrey Becker, Stefano Costa, Adam Rabinowitz, Sarah Bond, Brian Turner, Scott Vanderbilt, Noah Kaye, Ryan Horne
Copyright © The Contributors. Sharing and remixing permitted under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (cc-by).
Last modified Apr 21, 2015 03:50 PM
A list of every attribute (field) in a Pleiades place resource, complete with definition and editorial guidelines for each.

Attributes are arranged as they appear on the tabs in the "edit" view (i.e., the "add place" form).

"Default" tab:

Attribute Definition and guidelines
Title Required: A short title for the place record, suitable for listings, search results, and other summaries. The following guidelines apply:
  • Titles are always rendered in Roman characters. 
  • When there is an ancient toponym that can be assigned to a place with full confidence, that toponym should be used in the title of the place resource. 
  • When no ancient toponym can be assigned to the place with full confidence, the modern toponym conventionally associated with the place by historians and archaeologists should be used. 
  • Multiple toponyms may be separated by a slash, but keeping the title short enough to be useful in a listing is important, so alternate names and minor variants may be omitted. 
  • Note that all toponyms appearing in a place title must also be fully recording using subordinate "name" resources for each.
  • When there is neither an ancient nor a modern toponym firmly associated with the place, a descriptive title using the type of place should be used. These titles may incorporate short statements of spatial proximity. E.g., "Roman Bridge near Twice Brewed" or “Gladiatorial School at Carnuntum”
  • Where the appropriate title for a place is the same as the title of a related place of a different type (e.g., a settlement on an island of the same name), a short English-language gloss of the type may be appended in parentheses, as in "Chios (island)".
Description Required: A concise account of the place in question, preferably no more than 280 characters in length. The purpose of the description is to aid users in identifying a place of interest and, in particular, disambiguating multiple, same-titled entries in a search result list. When an ancient name appears in the title, the associated modern name should appear in the description.
Place type Required: Choose one or more appropriate terms from the Pleiades Place Type vocabulary. Remove the default value of "unknown".
Makes a connection with If the place described falls within a larger place or space (e.g., a temple within a city or a settlement on an island), use this attribute to indicate the next larger place.
Initial provenance Original publication context for this place resource. New resources created through the web interface will be given the value "Pleiades" and there is normally no reason to change it. If, however, you wish to copy information verbatim from another reference resource, please contact pleiades.admin@nyu.edu for guidance before proceeding.
Change note Each time you save the record, make a brief descriptive entry here indicating what was added or changed. This information will be stored in the record history.

"References" tab:

In accordance with standard scholarly practice, the Pleiades Citation Policy "mandates appropriate citation of primary and secondary sources for all content". The "References" tab on the edit view provides a mechanism for this practice. All materials, whether published in print or online, that were used to create and inform the place record must be cited here. The "add reference" widget provides a repeatable form (one for each cited reference) to structure the citations. Recording of the following attributes is facilitated by the form:

Attribute Definition and guildelines
Reference identifier Required: A unique identifying number or alphanumeric string for the item being cited. Wherever possible, this identifier should be a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), i.e., a stable web address. 
  • If the item in question is available online (e.g., via JSTOR), the "stable URL", "permalink" or similar address must be entered in this field. 
  • If the item is not itself available online, but the item is bibliographically cataloged (e.g., at WorldCat), then the "stable address" or "permalink" for the bibliographic record must be entered in this field.
  • If no URI for the item or a corresponding bibliographic record can be found, please email pleiades.admin@nyu.edu with a complete bibliographic citation so that it can be added to the Pleiades Zotero library, which will create a URI that can be used in this field.
Specific citation Required: A human-readable citation of the work in question. If the reference identifier (above) makes use of JSTOR, WorldCat, or the Pleiades Zotero Library, then a short-form citation including the last name of the first author and the year of publication may be used (along with page or item numbers, if appropriate). Otherwise, a long-form citation should be used, following the conventions of the American Journal of Archaeology (omit italics). 
Citation type Required: Pleiades provides several "citation types" that are to be used in order to indicate the function of an individual citation vis-à-vis the place record. The following types are appropriate for place records:
  • "See further": item cited specifically treats the place in question as its primary topic and is a good resource for additional information
  • "See also": item cited incidentally treats the place in question and is a good resource for additional information, but has some other primary topic (e.g., a Wikipedia article about a modern city that includes a subsection addressing relevant ancient history or archaeology) 
  • "Related": item cited treats a related or co-incident place. This citation type is normally used for references to other gazetteers, e.g., GeoNames and DARMC.
  • "Citation": item cited was used and/or is quoted in the material presented in the place resource, but for some reason is not deemed to be a good resource for additional information (use of this type should be justified to the editors in lieu of "see further" or "see also".
Other citation types (e.g., "Data Source" and "Evidence" are not appropriate for use on place resources. 

"Categorization" tab

Detailed help is to be added. There are no required entries on this tab.

"Ownership" tab

Pleiades automatically captures the usernames of individuals who add and edit place resources, adding them to appropriate fields on this form. If other individuals have assisted in the creation or modification of a place resource (e.g., through conversation or email exchange), they must be credited by adding their Pleiades usernames (preferred) or plain-text full names (if unwilling to join Pleiades for the purpose) in the "Creators" or "Contributors" lists, as appropriate. Note that only individuals referenced here by Pleiades username will be indicated on the Pleiades Credits page. 

If an automatically added username needs to be removed, or if the primary ownership of the resource needs to be changed, please send an email to pleiades.admin@nyu.edu explaining the situation and including the URI of the place resource in question.

 "Details" tab

This tab provides a rich-text entry field for a "details" attribute that may be as long or as short as the creators, contributors, and editors deem necessary. Appropriate contents include, but are not limited to:  specific information about the history and archaeology of the place; the precise dates of its construction, occupation, or destruction; the person or people who built it; what it was used for; when it was excavated, and the like. Difficulties of identifying attestations in ancient literature with extant archaeological remains are especially useful. 

Names and Locations

In Pleiades, "names" (modern or ancient) and "locations" (coordinates and associated data) are separate resources, subordinate to individual place resources. Their attributes are described in separate reference documents.