Maps, GIS Data, and Archaeological Data for Corinth and Greece

Maps, GIS Data, and Archaeological Data for Corinth and Greece

We present this collection of modern and historical maps, GIS data, and resource links for archaeologists, novice cartographers, and experienced GIS users. Original material, redistributed copies, and modified versions are offered under Creative Commons licensing. Feel free to copy, share, remix, transform, and build upon the maps and data as long as the source and changes are documented and they remain free. Download links may be found for both high resolution TIF images and Shapefiles covering the Corinthia and beyond. Those who wish to finish the readymade maps with an image editor like Photoshop may click the links beneath each thumbnail map. Others with GIS skills to construct their own dynamic maps should see the GIS Data section. Sources for the data as well as other good open data resources are further down the page.

Readymade High-res Basemaps with Layers (click links to download)

	Greece Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 500m contours. Layers: administrative (national boundary, periferiesand Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient major settlements, railways, rivers, and roads.
	Peloponnese, Attica, and Southwestern Aegean(1:1,000,000) Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 200m contours. Layers: administrative (periferies and Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient places, railways, rivers, and roads.
	Attica and the Northeastern Peloponnese Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 200m contours. Layers: administrative (periferies and Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient places, railways, rivers, and roads.
	Corinthia (1:250,000) Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 100m contours. Layers: Ancient City Walls, administrative (periferiesand Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient places, railways, rivers, and roads. Scale bar.
	Bioitia (1:333,333) Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 200m contours. Layers: administrative (periferies and Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient places, railways, rivers, and roads. Scale bar.
	Crete (1:750,000) Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 250m contours. Layers: administrative (Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient places,  rivers, and roads. Scale bar.
	Attica (1:250,000) Two hi-res Geo-Tif basemaps: Color and B&W w/ 100m contours. Layers: Ancient City Walls, administrative (periferiesand Kallikrates demes), land cover, modern cities, Pleiades ancient places, railways, rivers, roads, and urban area. Scale bar.
*see the GIS data section for Greece for the data sources.
Corinth Archaeological Data and Basemaps by American School of Classical Studies at Athens are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

GIS Data

The archaeological data, basemap, shapefiles, and optional layer files (see bottom of page for use of layer files) can be downloaded and assembled into a dynamic map using GIS software. The Corinth material is our work. It is followed by redistributed copies and modified versions of regional data with sources noted.

Download

Corinth archaeological data: cover the Corinthia, the ancient city of Corinth, or the central archaeological site (WGS 84, zone 34N). We will add to these shapefiles when possible.

• City walls: line shapefile for the Classical and LR city walls.
• Monuments: these are non-adjacent overlapping polygons circumscribed around the subject with place/monument names attached.
• Sites: point file with archaeological sites and few museums in the Corinthia. Also in Google Earth KMZ.
• Central archaeological area, ca. 325 B.C.E: line file plan of the monuments of the main site just before the construction of the South Stoa.
• Peirene state plan: new topographical survey of the Peirene Fountain completed in 2006.  Dangerous and unsurveyed areas were supplemented by Hill's drawings.
• Classical houses: Buildings I-IV were resurveyed for Corinth VII.6
• Underground water system: new survey data used to 'rubbersheet' Hill's plan of the Peirene underground tunnels.

• Sacred caves: a group of ten caves (points) in the Corinthia and beyond, assembled from various sources noted in the data.

• Surface geology with layer file: polygon shapefile of central portion of the Corinthia.

Corinth orthophotos, DEMs, and other products: produced from low level aerial photos in Agisoft Photoscan.
	Corinth Archaeological Site, Scale 5cm pixels, UTM zone 34N Orthophotomosaic, GeoTif 169 Mb DEM (digital surface model), GeoTif 331 Mb 1 m contours, SHP 56 Mb
	Peirene, Scale 5mm pixels, UTM zone 34N Orthophotomosaic, GeoTif, 236 Mb
	Korakou, UTM zone 34N Orthophotomosaic 2015, 3cm pixels, GeoTif, 338 Mb DEM (digital surface model), 50cm pixels, GeoTif, 2 Mb 25 cm contours from 2002 survey, SHP, 1.3 Mb XYZ points from 2002 survey, TXT, 19 Kb State plan from Blegen 1921, GeoTif, 700 Kb Orthophotomosaic from 1962 aerial photos, GeoTif, 6 Mb

Historical maps of the Corinthia: These raster images are rubberheeted and georeferenced to modern control points in UTM, zone 34N. Each zipped file contains a TIF and a TFW world file.
	Francesco Morosini map of central Corinthia, 1687: 720Mb, Dated on Christmas day several months after his army made it's "fortunate shot" destroying the Ottoman powder magazine (the Parthenon) during the seige of Athens. It was drawn with south oriented to the top and split over six linen sheets. In this file it is reoriented north to the top and reassembled in one image before georeferencing. Ancient features, contemporary buildings and roads, fountains and springs, fortifications and towers, and topographic features are highlighted on this map. The area to the east of the Isthmus still has quite a bit of distortion.
	Pierre Peytier map of Ancient Corinth, 1829: 122Mb, a small but accurate survey by the Morea Expedition shows that the lines of many roads in the village remain unchanged.

Greece shapefiles with optional layer files: Coverage is the entire country or greater (various UTM). Sources and versions noted below. The layer files are optional, created by us, to enrich the visualization of the data.

• Ancient Place Names and Layer File (Pleiades): points, 6Mb. This modified version was translated from Pleiades original CSV to a shapefile.
• Ancient Theaters (geodata.gov.gr): 43 points, 4Kb. This ia a modified version in which Corinthian theaters were appended to the original file.
• Cities in English and Greek (geodata.gov.gr): points, 4Kb
• Cities in Greek (Geofabrik/OSM): points, 425Kb
• Coastline lines (Geofabrik/OSM); lines, 319Mb
• Coastline water polygon and Layer File (Geofabrik/OSM): polygons, 15Mb. For this modified version, we clipped the file to include the waters just beyond the borders of Greece.
• Modern administrative boundaries (geodata.gov.gr): Greece, line 8Mb; Kapodistrias plan 1997, polygon 6Mb; Kallikratis plan 2011, polygon 6Mb; Peripheries 2008, polygon 3.6Mb
• Natural Features like inland hydrology and forests with Layer File (Geofabrik/OSM): polygons, 12Mb
• Points of Interest (OSM): over 156,000 points in CSV format includes amenities, shops, historic, transportation, natural, etc.: edited file, 3.2Mb, and original 'flat' download, 3Mb. Geofabrik has convenient POI as well but the site far fewer points and less associated data.
• Railways and Layer File (Geofabrik/OSM): lines, 900Kb
• Roads and Layer File (Geofabrik/OSM): lines, 78Mb
• Rivers and Layer File (geodata.gov.gr): lines, 2Mb
• Settlements in English (geodata.gov.gr): points, 217Kb
• Urban Atlas cities (EEA): polygons, 185Mb, includes Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Iraklion, Larisa, Volos, Ioannina, Kavala, Kalamata (zones >100,000 pop.)
• Waterways and Layer File (Geofabrik/OSM): lines, 5Mb
• Corine Land Cover Inventory from 2000 and Layer File (geodata.gov.gr): polygons, 99Mb

Basemap, contours, and ASTER DEM: Coverage is 36-39 degrees latitude and 20-26 degrees longitude. ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA. Bathymetry derived from EMODnet data

• Basemap.zip,118 Mb and BasemapWIthBathymetry.zip, 326 Mb: intended as a backdrop for the shapefiles on this page. The file is a zipped GeoTiff with a world file (.tfw) generated from the DEM below with naturally colored visualization (similar to the color maps at the top of the page) based on elevation, slope, and hillshade to provide a pleasant and informative background for other data. It retains the resolution of the original data which is nominally 1 arc-second or about 30 m per pixel, though actually less.
• Contour lines at 50 m interval and Layer File: lines generated from DEM, 15Mb
• Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and Layer File: raster, 88Mb.  Mosaic from 1 degree x 1 degree DEMs.
• The European Environment Agency also has some very nice 1 arcsec (~30m) base maps derived from SRTM and ASTER GDEM.
• BathymetryDEM.zip, 929 Mb, from EMODnet data.

*Note that the rivers and place name data may seem repetitive but each dataset has strengths and weaknesses.

*Greek names encoded with ISO 88597 and may not display properly in ArcGIS. Default encoding for ESRI must be set on Windows via "regedit" as per this ESRI support page.

And see AWOL's Roundup of Resources on Ancient Geography