ArchAtlas Atlas & Gazetteer
Chronologies
In many of the source gazetteers and databases, temporal data is given by ceramic period or cultural groupings. By definition these are highly regionalised chronologies. In order to make the data comparable across all the gazetteers, it was necessary for the ArchAtlas team to devise a standard temporal scheme based on absolute dates while still preserving the cultural correlations.
Our standard is derived in part from A. Sherratt, 1985, Ancient Times: an Archaeological Map and Timescale, Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.
Work is in progress to implement the standard temporal scheme in our sites database and to develop a chronology search tool.