Examples of Geographic Entities in the Barrington Atlas

Representing Entities on the Map

The Barrington Atlas provides its users with 102 maps depicting the ancient landscape with modern cartographic conventions.

Both physical and cultural entities are highlighted, to the extent that modern scholarship can report their historical details. The maps therefore indicate elevation and salient terrain elements, such as lakes, rivers and swamps. Where our sources provide us with names for these features, they are labeled. For example, in this excerpt from the Barrington map of Lycia and Pamphylia (Map 65), we find a river labeled Lysis.

The general spatial footprints of ancient regions and tribal territories are indicated with distinctive labeling, because the boundaries of ancient Greek and Roman regions, civic/tribal territories and other administrative areas are almost always so poorly documented by surviving evidence that they cannot be drawn with confidence. Therefore, a label is used here to indicate the general area once inhabited by the Ormeleis. A broad plain, called Makron Pedion, is similarly indicated. Both of these labels are underlined in red to indicate that they are attested by sources, or indicated by archaeology, during only one of the five time periods treated by the Barrington Atlas: the "Roman" period (30 BC - AD 300). The absence of color-coding from a label indicates that the entity was a going concern during more than one of these periods; users must have recourse to the Map-by-Map Directory to determine which periods.

Roads too are traced, and our confidence in following their routes is indicated through the choice of solid and dashed linework. For example, here we find the Via Sebaste, a major road whose route can be traced confidently in this area. Another road, unnamed to our knowledge, branched off of the Via Sebaste just south of its crossing of the Lysis. This road is depicted with dashed linework because its route is more difficult to follow precisely.

Similarly, hollow round symbols indicate the approximate locations of settlements, whereas other settlements may be placed more confidently and so earn solid round symbols. Compare, for example, Olbasa's solid circle with Polyetta's hollow symbol.

The Atlas' scholarly compilers also signal occasional hesitancy in the assignment of a name, attested in literature, to a site securely located by archaeology. This is done by appending a question mark to the label for a site, as here with Kormasa?.

A controlled set of distinctive icons are used to indicate sites of various types; for example, five-pointed stars mark the locations of extra-urban temples, sanctuaries, monuments, shrines and tombs, as is the case here with a shrine to Roma et Augustus.

The ''Barrington Atlas'' Key explains all conventions used on the maps.

Describing Entities in the Map-by-Map Directory

The maps are supplemented by the Map-by-Map Directory. This 1,500-page work provides a compiler’s introduction for each map, together with a list of additional data for each labeled feature and a full bibliography.

Consider the following extract from the Directory for Map 65.

Grid	Name	Period	Modern Name / Location	Reference
E4	Ağva	CH		Özoral 1980
E2	Adada	HRL	Karabaulo	von Aulock 1977, 20 22; TIB Phrygien 170
C4	Aedesa fl.	R	Ak Çay	Bean 1967, 40 41
E2	[Agrai]	L	Ağras, Atabey	Robert 1977, 43 44; TIB Phrygien 172
D4	Akalissos	RL	Asar Deresi	TAM 2.3, 318 22
C5	Akroterion Pr.	RL?	Ulu Burun	StadMM 241 42; C. Foss
D3	Alassos	R	Akören?	Corsten 1998, 56 57
A4	Alina? Ins.	H	Yassıca Ada	RE Κρυέων Νῆσοι
B4	Aloanda?	R	Kabaağaç	TAM 2.2, 188
G2	Amblada	HRL	Hisartepe, near Kızılca	von Aulock 1977, 22 23; TIB Galatien 122
F1	Anaboura	HRL?	Enevre	RE 2; TIB Phrygien 182 83
C2	Anaua/Sanaos	C/HRL	Sarı Kavak	TIB Phrygien 371
D3	Andeda	HRL	Yavuz, formerly Andya	RE Suppl. 12
C5	Andriake	RL	near Myra	RE
	Ankon Pr. = Pedalion Pr.
B4	Antikragos M.	HR	Buba Dağ	RE
A2	Antiochia ad Maeandrum	HRL	Aliağaçiftliği	TIB Phrygien 185 88; NPauly 6
C5	Antiphellos/Habesos	HRL/C	Kaş	NPauly

In lockstep with the maps, directory listings provide historical names for features (see the second column in the example above, labeled Name). Project compilers and editors exercised great care to admit only those names attested in ancient sources or – absent any such – those later names that might be reasonably inferred backward in time. Thus, latinate forms assumed for Greek sites by modern scholars, and used in print, have been rigorously excluded. Where a cultural feature is attested by archaeology but no ancient name can be associated with it, modern names have been introduced, using italic type (for example, Ağva). In those cases where a map's scholarly compiler(s) found it necessary to indicate hesitancy in the assignment of a name to an entity, the conventions followed on the map are replicated in the Directory listing (e.g., Alina? Ins. and Aloanda?).

A series of editorial conventions for historical names, employed on the maps and in the directory, facilitates the marking of variants, reconstruction, interpolation and other editorial observations. The following conventions are employed:

• Peme/Hypsele - Alternate Names
• ‘Beodizo’ - Name in its attested form (considered inaccurate)
• Florenti(ol)a - Variant Spelling
• [Camelaria] - Name known only from an earlier or later source
• *Psarela - Reconstructed Name
• Thac(...) - Name only partially known

The temporal aspect is treated as well. The 1,500-year span of the atlas is subdivided into 5 broad periods. The currency of names, and the relevance or habitation of built features, are communicated with letter codes for each period, postfixed with a question mark as necessary to indicate hesitancy on the part of the compiler. So, for example, a single historical entity located at modern Sarı Kavak was called "Anaua" during the Classical period. Later, during the Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique periods, it was called "Sanaos". These are the periods employed by the Barrington Atlas:

• A = Archaic (Pre-550 BC)
• C = Classical (550-330 BC)
• H = Hellenistic / Middle-to-Late Republican at Rome (330-30 BC)
• R = Roman (30 BC - AD 300)
• L = Late Antique (AD 300-640)

For all features, an attempt is made (via the Modern Name / Location column) to communicate the modern position of a feature via an associated modern placename or short description.

Finally, a select number of bibliographic citations are provided in order to direct users of the atlas, as efficiently as possible, to a comprehensive or representative work that, in turn, facilitates discovery of all relevant scholarly publications. In the absence of any such modern work, primary source citations were substituted. Rarely, a compiler’s name is introduced to indicate an original conclusion or discovery whose separate publication was anticipated, but not yet scheduled.