The new Chronological Report Page on Helladic.info

The helladic.info site is pleased to announce support for chronological table creation and chronological ordering of sites in the DB.  A new database (Rev. 0.064) and new software has been delivered to implement this addition to the functionality.

The new Chrono report generates a table of occupation times based on your choices from the selection control on the Controls page. The control page allows you to select a combination of Region, Ceramic Horizon, or Type. After making your selection click on the 'Report' button. This brings you to the main report page. That page now has a 'Chrono' button. When you click on that button you will be given a chronological table on which your selection sites will be plotted with 'x's in the appropriate time span columns. Let's look at an example.

From the controls page I select 'Building' under the type label. Then press 'Report'. You'll be taken to the main report page:

You'll see the new 'Chrono Report' button. When you press that you'll be taken to the new Chrono page:

In the left-hand column are the unique place key identifiers for all the places in your selection set. They are clickable. When you click on one you'll be taken to the specific Place Key Report page for that site.

The second column is the place name. The names in this column are mouseable. When you run the mouse over them the region name will pop up in a tool-tip.

Succeeding columns, 'EH', 'EH I', 'EH II' etc., are the ceramic horizon columns. If there is evidence for your site having existed, been used, etc. during any specific ceramic horizon then there will be an 'x' in the box for that ceramic horizon. Here we can see that C1164, Troullos on Kea, existed in the LH I and the LH II.

The column headers with the ceramic horizon names are mouseable. When you do mouse over them the approximate year range will pop up in a tool tip.

It must be emphasized that these ranges are very approximate and scholars differ over what the proper year ranges should be for any specific ceramic horizon. Please keep this in mind. As I learn better ranges for specific ceramic horizons then I will probably change these tool tips.

The 'x' characters in the table boxes are also mouseable. When you do pass the mouse over them then the ceramic horizon label will pop up. This is intended to make it easier to work with the table when the column headers are out of sight.

When creating this table I faced the choice of making the table pageable (column headers never out of sight) or sortable. I chose sortable as probably the more useful alternative. When you click on the column heads the table will be re-sorted to put your criterion at the top. Because spaces in the cells sort before the character 'x' by default you'll probably have to click twice on any specific column head to get the effect that you want.

Also keep in mind that there are really two chrono pages, one in the helladic name style: 'EH', 'MH', 'LH' etc. and one in the Minoan name style 'EM', 'MM', 'LM', etc. These pages function differently. If your chosen data set has sites from Crete then the default or initial chrono page will show few or no 'x' characters in the table.

In order to see a meaningful chart you will switch to the 'Minoan Scale' page. Probably the most disorienting thing that a user can do is to make some region choice such as 'Crete' and then be faced with an empty chart and not know why. Remember to switch scales. The button to do this is at the upper right of the page and labelled 'Minoan Scale'.

Also keep in mind that some sites, particularly in the islands, have ceramic horizons in both styles. You will need to look at such sites under both scales. If you are on the Minoan Scale page there is also a button, in the same place, for switching back to Helladic.

I have not yet implemented a page for the Cycladic time scale.

There are buttons on the chrono pages that allow you to go to the elevation report page or the gazetteer report page. Those pages now also support buttons that allow you to go to the Chrono page. This should make multivariate analysis more convenient.

The tables, like any .html table, can be selected with the mouse, in whole or in part, and dropped directly onto an Excel spreadsheet. Here is an example of a table from the chrono page dropped onto Excel:

After you have dropped this table into Excel you can change the formatting or delete it completely as you choose.   But that's another topic.

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With a correspondent I've been discussing the question of whether putting exact locational information online is a good thing or a bad thing.  I'd like to hear from my readers on this question - do you have qualms about putting this kind of information online?  You can respond to this post or use my e-mail which is bobconsoli at gmail dot com.

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You can e-mail me (and I hope you will) at  bobconsoli   at   gmail dot com

And please remember - Friends don't let friends use Facebook.

Most researchers in this field use some product like Microsoft's Excel to create a 'DB'.  This is fine; it's what is generally referred to as a 'flat file'.  That is, a single table representation of your data of interest.

The Mycenaean Atlas database, on the other hand, is a relational database with several tables that was built using MySQL.  Dumps of this DB are available but you need MySQL (or similar) and a knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) to run it.  Otherwise it doesn't make much sense to ask for it.  But If you'd like to have a copy of the Mycenaean Atlas database anyway then e-mail me and tell me about your project.  

And remember that useful .kml and/or .csv files can be generated directly from all the windows (including the new reports pages) of the website helladic.info   Try it out!   I'm also willing to generate custom .csv or .kml files from the atlas if you need something specific.