Mapping the Classical World since 1869: Past and Future Directions

The Forma Urbis Romae is a monument of outstanding importance from many perspectives, but study of it consistently proved a severe challenge until the development of digital technology. The paper first outlines the longstanding difficulties, and then discusses the successive ongoing 21^st-century efforts to overcome them.

Since its establishment at UNC Chapel Hill in 2000, the Ancient World Mapping Center (awmc.unc.edu) has played increasingly wide and active roles. The paper reviews these, and evaluates their present importance and future potential.

The ‘digital turn’ in geography has brought marked changes in both research methods and scholarly communications to classical studies over the past forty years. The transition to digital cartography and the introduction of computational spatial analysis have created new paths for the field as well as new challenges. The paper offers a selective survey of this liminal period and its consequences.

Since the establishment of APA/SCS in 1869, modern mapping of the entire classical world or major parts of it (beyond the level of textbooks) has undergone two successive phases. The paper surveys and evaluates both, but with fuller attention to the second (from the 1980s), because it was a North American initiative by origin and also proved by far the more productive.

The paper surveys the limitations of surviving evidence for maps as a form of record and communication in Greek and Roman culture, and reflects on the evolution of modern approaches to this material.