Pleiades is an international research network and associated web portal and content management system (CMS) devoted to the study of ancient geography.

Governance and Participation

Organized by the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A., Pleiades brings together a global community of scholars, students and enthusiasts to expand and enhance continually the information originally brought together by the Classical Atlas Project (1988-2000) to support the publication of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (R.J.A. Talbert, ed., Princeton, 2000).

Our name, "Pleiades" (the daughters of Atlas in Greek Mythology) reflects both this heritage and the forward-looking goal of collaborative diversification.

How Does That Work?

Combining community approaches (like those used by Wikipedia) with academic-style editorial review, Pleiades enables anyone — from university professors to casual students of antiquity — to suggest updates to geographic names, descriptive essays, bibliographic references and geographic coordinates. Once vetted for accuracy and pertinence, these suggestions become a permanent, author-attributed part of future publications and data services.

Status

The Pleiades web portal and content management system are currently under development. Please visit our Development Section for more information.

Support and Software

Initial startup funding for Pleiades is generously provided by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities with a two-year grant (2006-2008) through its Preservation and Access Research and Development program.

Hosting for Pleiades during this period is provided by the Stoa Consortium and the Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities at the University of Kentucky.

The Pleiades web portal is being built atop the open-source Plone Content Management System, with the addition of a number of plugin components (Plone "Products"). All modifications and special-purpose plugins developed by the Pleiades Community will be released to the public for free re-use under compatible, open-source licensing.