Pleiades and Roukouni Korphi

Sometimes I wonder why Pleiades even bothers.  In truth, I wonder that a lot of the time.

Case in point: Pleiades no. 590035 which has the name 'Roukouni Korphi'.  After clicking on this and getting the inevitable annoying zoom-in from outer space we find ourselves staring at a barren landscape somewhere in SE Crete. 

What is Roukouni Korphi?  We are not told. 

Why was it selected for the atlas?  We are not told.

What does it depend on?  We are told that it is digitized from the Barrington Atlas

Well, it turns out that Roukouni Korphi is a circular structure,, perhaps a tower or look-out of some sort that dates from the Hellenistic.  I discovered this long afterwards.  The immediate problem was to find it because Pleiades' coordinates are obviously wrong.

I discovered that the ultimate source for this was in an article by Sinclair Hood who describes it like this:

"(11) ‘Roukouni Korfi’ ('Ρονκούνη Κορφή). Α high peak at the western end of the range of hills

on which (6) ‘Xinakhladha’ and ‘Tourkissa’, (7) ‘Kastellos’, and the sites (8), (9) near it lie,

about five minutes above (7) ‘Kastellos’ to the west. A few metres east of the summit Platon

has excavated an interesting circular building, which appears to be a beacon or guard station

constructed in Late Hellenistic times (Ergon for 1960, 206 f., with plan; cf. BCH lxxxv (1961)

876—7; ΚΚ xiv (1960) 511—12; ADelt xvi ( 1960) 259). This was no doubt in the territory of

ancient BIANNOS (see p. 83), and from the summit there is a very extensive View over the

Mesara plain to the west with Tsoutsouros (ancient INATOS) to the south, and as far as Arkalo—

khori and Mt. Juktas to the north."

So all we have to do is figure out where Xinakhladha, Tourkissa, Kastellos, and sites 8 (Amigdhaloi) and 9 (Bubouli) are located and then we look for a 'high peak' near there. I guess.

I went over Hood's article iwth a fine-toothed comb and I plotted all the points which he and his team describe around Khondros. The result is as you see in the next picture:

This does look like a section of a Jackson Pollock.  In actuality it is the area just above Kastri, NE of Inatos and SW of Biannos in south-eastern Crete.  There are two towns here, Perivolia on the upper right and Chondros on the lower right.  To the W of Chondros there is a valley which is watered by the Chondros stream.  On the S of that stream is a range of rocky hills on the top of which lies Roukouni Korphi (arrow 'Actual' at lower left center).

Here's another view from the north that shows the area in question:

 

Hood and his team name 11 sites worthy of note in this area of which R.K. is no. 11.  In order to locate it securely I located all 11 as closely as the descriptions permit.  After having done that it was relatively easy to locate R.K.  It is described as " ... about five minutes above (7) 'Kastellos' to the west."  The lat/lon pair for Kastellos is: 35.026222° N, 25.364229° E   When I scanned the peaks just to the W of 'Kastellos' I quickly discovered this: 

This matches the diagram given in Daux [1961].  [2]

Its position is: 35.023444° N, 25.359333° E

So, relative to its true location, where did Pleiades put it?  I measured the distance between the actual location and the Pleiades given location.  It turned out to be 949 m, which is almost exactly the median predicted Pleiades error of 930 m.[3]

Footnotes

[1] Hood, et al. [1964].

[2] Daux [1961] 873.  The description of the site is given on pp. 876-7.

[3] Consoli [2013].

Bibliography

Consoli [2013] : Consoli, Robert,  'A frequently asked question about the Pleiades redesign', Squinches (a Wordpress Blog),  7/24/2013.  Online here.

Daux [1961] : Georges Daux, 'Chronique des fouilles et découvertes archéologiques en Grèce en 1960', Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique [85], pp. 601 - 953.  1961.  Online here.

Hood et al. [1964] : Hood, Sinclair and Peter Warren , Gerald Cadogan, 'Travels in Crete, 1962', The Annual of the British School at Athens (59), pp. 50-99. 1964.  Online here.