Monday, July 22, 2013

The Ancient History of Google Maps


Geodia is a spatial timeline of ancient Mediterranean archaeology and material culture. An interactive timeline synchronised to a Google Map allows users to explore geographic sites and events from the fourth millennium BC to ca. 330 AD.

The site was designed to serve as an instructional resource, to help students in introductory courses in archaeology and art-history make sense of the spatial, temporal and visual complexity of the ancient Mediterranean, and visualise connections and differences across space and time.


The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land is an amazing collection of Google Maps that together form an on-line digital atlas of the region.

The site is divided into a number of areas, including a series of case studies, numerous historic maps, and a huge searchable database. The "Empires" section illustrates the march of empires across the Middle East, from the development of the first Egyptian state in about 3000 BCE to the Ottoman Empire in 1918 CE. The 'Empires' Google Map includes the option to view an animated time-line of these empires.

1 comment:

Garth Henning said...

How important is adding the descriptive text alongside of the maps? I know it makes the website feel more like an all-in-one educational site. However, generating comprehensive text that meets of exceeds a wikipedia level of quality seems unnecessary. Over at http://www.runningreality.org, we're concentrating on the visual narrative of a dynamic map and leaving the textual narrative to wikipedia. Is this a good strategy?