[First posted in AWOL 10 October 2016, updated (new URL) 18 May 2021]
roman-amphitheaters
Edited by Sebastian Heath
'roman-amphitheaters' is a digital resource that collects information
about Roman amphitheaters with a primary goal being the easy use of its
data in a wide variety of computational environments. It is designed to
support open-ended inquiry into the place and role of amphitheaters in
the Roman Empire.
The file 'roman-amphitheaters.geojson' holds the latest information
and is the source for other derived files, including
'roman-amphitheaters.csv'. The 'utility.ipynb' generates these other
files.
By default, github will display the 'roman-amphitheaters.geojson' file as a map.
Discussion of one approach to using this data, with links to
interactive code, is available in the article: S. Heath. 2021. "Applied
Use of JSON, GeoJSON, JSON-LD, SPARQL, and IPython Notebooks for
Representing and Interacting with Small Datasets. In S. E. Bond, P.
Dilley, and R. Horne, eds. Linked Open Data for the Ancient Mediterranean: Structures, Practices, Prospects. ISAW Papers 20. http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/20-13/ .
Note: The information here continues to change over time. An ongoing
focus is entering more direct citation of sources into the
'roman-amphitheaters.geojson' file. Towards this goal, I have made small
steps towards implementing a flexible bibliographic infrastructure for
this dataset in Zotero. See https://www.zotero.org/groups/2900686/roman_amphitheaters
. The number of titles currently included there is very small and only
slowly growing. But growing nonetheless. A likewise slowly growing
number of amphitheater descriptions have bibliographic citations and a
Zotero item identifier for each title. The .csv file will sometimes have
the first Zotero identifier. It is a goal to make an html rendering of
this information that includes working links to the online version of
the Zotero items.
As a convenience, the file 'roman-amphitheaters.qgz' is a simple QGIS project file that loads the geojson and uses the 'Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire' tileset as a basemap. If the map is blank when that file is opened, choose the "Zoom to Layer(s)" item from the "View" menu.
