Online historical geographic information system (GIS) called the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (DARE) is a potentially new source for environmental historians and environmental archaeologists who study Turkey and its surrounding regions in Roman era. Developed by the Swedish “research engineer” Johan Åhlfeldt and hosted by the Department of Archaeology and Classical History at Lund University in Sweden, the DARE is a gazetteer of ancient places of the Roman Empire, based on the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World among other sources. The DARE is built with vector technology which enables maps to be styled in real time, displaying place names in different languages, rotation and tilting of the map to achieve a 3D effect, among other features.
Together with Klokan Technologies GmbH, we are developing a new Roman background map using vector tiles technology. The project is supported by Pelagios Commons and is described in two articles (first article, second article). Source material and a preview of the vector map is available on Github. Maps built with vector technology enable maps to be styled in real time, displaying place names in different languages, rotation and tilting of the map to achieve a 3D effect, among other features.
In DARE, ancient sites are organized as places and buildings (subsites), each with a distinct place type and location. The buildings are not rendered on the base map because of their close proximity to the places they belong to, but are instead available as thematic overlays (e.g. amphitheaters, theaters, temples etc. respectively). Meta data about places and buildings are available next to the map.