Barrington Atlas App splash screen

Princeton University Press has launched its iPad app version of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, as we noted here on Oct. 31. The app has been made available for $19.95 on iTunes. The Barrington Facebook page includes recent news and reviews about the release. Princeton provided a copy of the app for this review. Testing was done on a 4th-generation 128 GB iPad running iOS 7.0.4 after a clean restart.

When the print version of the Barrington Atlas was published in 2000, the fruit of a multiyear international collaboration, it redressed a problem that had bedeviled the latter 20th-century: a lack of up-to-date, accurate, and visually informative/attractive (yes, I link those two attributes) maps for the classical world. Murray’s Small Classical Atlas, a short but distinguished accomplishment of Victorian cartography popular in schools, had seen its last update in 1917 (though reprints appeared through the 1950s).

Hammond’s 1981 Atlas, from eBay

The efforts of van der Heyden and Scullard (1962) and Hammond (1981) were useful as references, but their visual qualities (too few maps, and those reduced to atopographic colored line-drawings in the former; sepia monochrome in the latter) left much to be desired. The Facts-on-File Cultural Atlases released from 1980-1990 (“Greek World,” “Roman World,” “Egypt,” and “Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East”) were examples of the encyclopedia-style that prevailed in that decade, with lots of insets, photos, short descriptions, timelines and essays — an integrated approach that had many merits, but which were ultimately limited in sheer cartographic utility.

Hispania, from Findlay’s 1849 Atlas

What we were missing (which we often found ourselves consulting as graduate students) were 19th-century productions such as Findlay’s Atlas (see the PDF here), or Butler’s Atlas (here at Project Gutenberg), which married visual consistency, clarity, and topographic detail. Above all, we worshipped the achievement of Carl Müller, responsible for much of the research and production behind many of the maps for Smith and Grove’s Atlas of Ancient Geography published by Murray in 1874. (Richard Talbert told this story in Imago Mundi in 1994; he also characterized Müller’s “comprehensive vision of the physical and cultural landscape of classical antiquity” in a review article of 1997 [American Journal of Philology 117, p. 323]. Smith and Grove’s original volume, which lost money for John Murray, has now been reprinted.)

These were maps with the uncanny ability to tell you what you wanted to know at a glance (general location, geographic position, political affinities, chronological attributes, key relationships to other major features or sites), and which helped to clarify your next questions, rather than leaving you frustrated at minimalist cartography. They were also works of art in themselves.

Reasons for the ‘death of classical mapmaking’ between the 1950s-1990s included a reaction, by the New Archaeology (‘Processualism‘), against a Cultural-Historical Archaeology that sometimes reduced the ancient world to a series of neat ‘period maps’ in which one seemed to be able to track the ‘spread of civilization/empires’ from one part of the globe to another. That justifiable response to over-simplification was abetted, in the 1980s, by a nascent shift to digital publishing processes that for a while made it overly difficult or expensive to reproduce large, high-quality, detailed color maps. Ultimately it was technology that came to the rescue, in the mid 1990s, of the problem it had help cause, with the maturation of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), detailed satellite and digital image processing capabilities, and cheaper, better color printing.

So it was a timely challenge that Richard Talbert and the Ancient World Mapping Center undertook in the 1990s (as he describes in the Preface to both the printed and iPad versions). The need was longstanding, the technology was ready, and the expertise and will had been gathered. The result was certainly a success; the Barrington Atlas is now the standard general map reference in the field. (For a contemporary review of its strengths, weaknesses and potential, see S.E. Alcock, et al., Journal of Roman Archaeology 14 [2001].)

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In an age of increasingly instant and portable knowledge, however, the Barrington Atlas had a problem — at 12.8 x 18 inches in size (necessary for the cartographic detail) and just over eight pounds in weight (necessary for the broad geographic coverage), it was not easily moved. Furthermore, its printed price approaches $400, which means that it is generally affordable only by libraries, which in turn due to its size and cost will understandably not tend to lend it out, but keep it in the reference collection.

These days there is a general unwillingness to pay much of anything for the production and dissemination of knowledge (which has led to a revolt against corporate ‘content providers’ while at the same time undercutting support for the academics expected to do the work). So the Barrington Atlas App, which addresses all the shortcomings of the printed version, is about 1/20 the cost. That still puts it at a ‘premium’ price point in the App Store, which may be wise, since it genuinely has quality, enduring content to offer. While it is unclear whether Princeton will get its money back from the digital production, the App certainly ought to extend and expand the life of the Barrington Atlas project.

So what particular features does the App offer, and how are they implemented? Finally, what opportunities have been missed on this new platform, and how might a digital ancient atlas become more powerful and empowering?

Maps browser

Integrated map key

These maps are presented exactly as they are in the printed text, with a few enhancements. A tap on the screen reveals a top menu with icons of a key and a compass. The key opens a hierarchical map key for chronological designations, cultural and natural feature categories, printed type styles, orthographic conventions for sourcing ancient names, and scale and elevation conventions. This key shows a digital advantage over the paper version, offering quicker access to important metadata conventions. The key slides out at right, covering part of the map, but the map can be moved (at least as long as it is zoomed in slightly) so that a feature or typeface can be compared directly with the key.

Compass function

Locator page

Gazetteer

Help, page 2