Using the Mycenaean Atlas Project - 2

The bibliography tables

Every site record in the Mycenaean Atlas database has at least one corresponding bibliographical record.  For example site C173, a ruined tholos in Triphylia which is sometimes called ‘Kamari: Gouva’, has four bibliographical entries to support its location:

1.  Simpson, [1981] 137, ‘F 209 Kamari: Gouva’

2.  Zavadil [2012] 411, ‘Kamari/Gouva (Ep. Triphylias)’

3.  Simpson and Dickinson [1979], 177, ‘D 236 Kamari: Gouva’

4.  McDonald and Rapp [1972], 298, ‘236 Kamari: Gouva’

This information is stored in the ‘fnb’ table.  Each record contains the following fields:

a.   Place Key (pk).  This is the unique identifying key for each location, here ‘C173’.

b.  Source (src). This is a symbol which indicates the specific work being quoted.  E.g., ‘S81’ for Simpson [1981].

c.   Page (page)

d.  Title (Title).  The nature of the gazetteer literature is such that every site is given an identifying paragraph with a number and title.  For example, Simpson [1981] describes Kamari: Gouva in the paragraph labelled ‘F 209 Kamari: Gouva’.

e.   Comment (Comment).  This field can be used if, for some reason, there is something unusual about the place description.  Ordinarily this field is null.

Only the src (source) field in ‘fnb’ needs to be explained.  In order to save space and cut down on typing the database contains another table, ‘biblio’, which holds the full information about each source.  For example Zavadil[2012] has a full entry in the biblio table.  When I refer to Zavadil[2012] from a site record, as here for C173, I give its name in the ‘fnb’ table simply as ‘Z’.  The biblio table contains the information for converting the symbol ‘Z’ into a full citation for Zavadil [2012].  So, to recap, the ‘fnb’ table contains all the bibliographic citations for each site.  The ‘biblio’ table contains the full information about each cited source.

The fields of the ‘biblio’ table are as follows:

a.   Source (src): the symbolic identifier for this specific book or article.  E.g., ‘Z’ for Zavadil [2012].

b.  Type of work (BType): ‘A’ for article, ‘B’ for book, ‘W’ for website.

c.   Short citation (ShortC): A short citation suitable for identifying the work in footnotes.  Here ‘Zavadil [2012]’.

d.  Long citation (LongC): A full citation of the work being cited.  Suitable for a bibliography.  Here:

 ‘Zavadil, Michaela. Monumenta: Studien zu mittel- und späthelladischen Gräbern in Messenien.  Wien:Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Denkschriften. 2012.’

e.   Comment (Comment): The comment field can be used to disambiguate the reference if that’s required.  Most often I have used it to hold an internet link if that points to the full book or article.

To retrieve all the bibliographic information in the fnb table for a specific site such as ‘C173’ you would do this:

select * from fnb where pk = ‘C173’;

That would return this:

pk, src, page, title, comment

'C173', 'S81', '137', 'F 209 Kamari: Gouva', NULL

'C173', 'Z', '411', 'KAMARI/GOUVA (EP. TRIPHYLIAS)', NULL

'C173', 'SD79', '177', 'D 236 Kamari: Gouva', NULL

'C173', 'M72', '298', '236   Kamari: Gouva', NULL

In order to retrieve all the bibliographic information in the fnb table for C173 and also convert the symbol used in the src field of the fnb record into a short citation from the biblio table you would do something like this.

SELECT a.pk,

    (SELECT shortc FROM biblio b WHERE b.src = a.src),

    a.page,

    a.title,

    a.comment

FROM fnb a WHERE a.pk = 'C173';

I've given this query a bit of formatting to show more clearly where the conversion from 'src' to 'shortc' takes place.

That query would return this:

pk, shortc, page, title, comment

C173, Simpson [1981], 137, F 209 Kamari: Gouva,

C173, Zavadil [2012], 411, KAMARI/GOUVA (EP. TRIPHYLIAS),

C173, Simpson and Dickinson [1979], 177, D 236 Kamari: Gouva,

C173, McDonald and Rapp [1972], 298, 236   Kamari: Gouva,

Here you see that all the src symbols in the first attempt are now converted to the short citation form.  E.g., ‘Z’ to ‘Zavadil [2012]’ or ‘S81’ to ‘Simpson [1981]’.

Here's a diagram that shows how the fnb table relates to the biblio table and that the shared key is the 'Src' field:

And finally, just for fun, perhaps you'd like a map that shows every site for which Zavadil [2012] is a contributing bibliographic source.

Here it is:

Places in messenia for which Zavadil is a contributing source in the bibliography tables.

The query I used is:

select a.pk, a.lat, a.lon, a.type, a.acc, a.region from 

       site a, 

       fnb b where 

                 a.pk = b.pk and 

                 b.src = 'Z';

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Bibliography

McDonald and Rapp [1972]: McDonald, William A. and George R. Rapp, Jr., The Minnesota Messenia Expedition: Reconstructing a Bronze Age Regional Environment, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  USA. 1972.

Simpson [1981]: Simpson, Richard Hope. Mycenaean Greece. Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1981.

Simpson and Dickinson [1979]:  Simpson, Richard Hope and O.T.P.K. 

Dickinson,  A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilization in the Bronze Age, Vol. I: The Mainland and the Islands, Paul Åströms Förlag, Goteborg. 1979.

Zavadil [2012]: Zavadil, Michaela. Monumenta: Studien zu mittel- und späthelladischen Gräbern in Messenien.  Wien:Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Denkschriften. 2012.