Mediterranean archaeology · a reference atlas
Documenting places.
Connecting observations.
How do photographs become enduring archaeological records? Explore collection work, excavation archives, architectural representations and conservation systems—then design a responsible contribution from a distant university.
Bundled physical context: Natural Earth, without administrative boundaries. Optional backgrounds provide regional relief, terrain, ocean, ancient atlas reference, detailed streets or modern imagery. Points: Pleiades representative locations, not surveyed feature positions. Click a place or use the list. Bundled coastlines depict modern physical context.
Figure reader
Look closely. Keep the evidence type visible.
Image points refer to this publication excerpt, not GIS coordinates.
Compare methods, not rankings
What makes a record usable?
Compare the documented practices of any two precedents. “Not assessed” means a gap in this audit, not proof that a project lacks the practice. These are descriptions of evidence, not maturity scores.
Figures retain their original framing and scale. Side-by-side display makes no registration or metric equivalence claim.
A proposed partnership workflow
Stay in the loop. Return useful records.
An overseas university, including a prospective institution such as Peking University, could host an observation repository while local site authorities retain control over identification, conservation decisions and sensitive access. No such partnership is asserted here.
Aggregation needs a question and a return path
Individually collected photographs can be primary records of visible state and presentation. Their value grows when a repository connects originals to a feature, the circumstances of capture, competing identifications and later observations. Device metadata supplies clues: location may be disabled, absent or removed, and clocks may be wrong. A photographer’s name, consent and chosen licence belong in the deposit agreement.
Overlap among photographs can support viewpoint matching or a model experiment. Metric reconstruction additionally needs sufficient image geometry, camera information, scale or control, an error assessment and a retained processing history. Pooling pictures is not itself validated 3D reconstruction. Conservation diagnosis remains a reviewed specialist task.
HeritageTogether distinguishes generating donated records from analysing project-supplied data. A university could support both: prepared on-site capture and remotely reviewed teaching or classification. The atlas proposes a transfer of practices, not evidence that these projects already accept university visitor uploads.
Connect this atlas to the Carthage experiment
Use the author’s Roman Villas photograph reading to practise separating visible masonry from a candidate construction identification. Then use the Carthage research lab for an image or model experiment. The atlas supplies precedents and citations; these existing readers supply personal-image observations. Their feature assignments remain hypotheses unless independently controlled.
Citation and access apparatus
Sources, figures and remaining gaps
Every displayed figure has a publication locator, attribution and evidence limit. Permission-limited excerpts remain local; two Herculaneum excerpts carry CC BY 4.0. Source-linked entries for Bulla Regia, Pompeii and Thelepte are reference leads, without a claim that their image pixels were inspected here.