Using What 3 Words to establish locations in the Mycenaean Atlas Project

Earl: ... Then we're off to Haiti!

Carol: Not Haiti, Tahiti!  [1]

We can sympathize with poor Earl's tragic confusion.  Accurate location names and positions are crucial in geography.

In addition to the traditional lat/lon pair as a position indicator for Mycenaean sites, I’ve become interested in other ways of specifying positions.  To that end I have added two new methods in a ‘coords’ table for the Mycenaean Atlas Project.  One method is more traditional, the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) system, and one is more cutting edge, the What3Words system.

The What3words website has aroused interest because the designers appear to have pioneered an entirely new method of specifying locations.  Instead of the relatively cumbersome lat/lon pair (or the UTM triplet) it has divided the entire surface of the earth into 3 meter squares.  Each of these squares is uniquely identified with a three word sequence.  For example, the lat/lon pair of 43.553997, -116.276693 maps onto the three-word sequence ‘green.ideas.sleep’ (hello Noam Chomsky!) which is somewhere in Idaho.  What3Words is being adopted by a number of tech firms.  For example, Mapillary has just incorporated it into its system.

To convert a lat/lon pair into the three word designator (triplet) you go to this URL:

You check the box that says ‘I agree to the what3words terms and conditions’ and you then enter your lat/lon pair into the box that says ‘Convert coordinates to 3 word addresses’. 

Entering the pair -17.532988°, -149.561509° (Papeete in Tahiti) returns the triplet: ‘senior.obeyed.gulped’.  This triplet is unique and unchanging.

What 3 Words conversion box.  Here converting a lat/lon pair into an English word triplet.

To convert a What3Words triplet back into a lat/lon pair you go to the same URL and enter the three words into the box that is labelled ‘Convert 3 word addresses to coordinates’. 

Entering the triplet of ‘senior.obeyed.gulped’ returns the original lat/lon pair.

What 3 Words conversion box.  Here converting an English word triplet into a lat/lon pair.

The vendor’s web site reasonably says that most places on earth have no addresses and that the three-word system is the answer.  I think that this is partly true but I’ve actually included the What3Words system into the database simply because it’s easier to remember a position this way.

I have added three fields to the ‘coords’ table to support What3Words.  They are

W3W1: varchar(20);

W3W2: varchar(20);

W3W3: varchar(20);

 

A simple query to retrieve (from the MAP database) the three-word key for a particular site would be this:

 

select concat (W3W1,', ', W3W2,', ', W3W3) from coords where pk = 'C1900';

(C1900 is in the Skourta Valley, north of Attica.)

This query returns the triplet: 'swaggers, participating, remark'

The What3Words website also makes an API available so that you can reach their conversion routines from software that you can write.  Here's an example of what this could look like (converting a lat/lon pair into a three-word key) when embedded in your PHP code[2]:

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(

CURLOPT_URL => "https://api.what3words.com/v2/reverse?coords=$plat%2C$plon&key=YOUR_KEY_HERE&lang=en&format=json&display=full",

CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,

CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",

CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,

CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,

CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,

CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) 

       {echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;}  

else 

{

$response1 = str_replace("\"", "", $response);

$pieces = explode(":", $response1);  

$three_Words = explode(",", $pieces[7]);

$W3W = explode(".",$three_Words[0]);

}

This requires that a curl session be initiated so you'll want the Curl dll's to be available in your language system.  The only code you have to pay attention to here is in red.  That's the the API key which you get from What3Words.  You also make sure that your latitude is in $plat and your longitude is in $plon.  The result is in the value $W3W which is an array of three parts which contains the three words.  If you don't choose to break up the return string then the three-word result is in $response which I've set in purple.

Status of the Mycenaean Atlas Project

I've recently added twenty-four locations in the area of the Skourta plain (Farinetti [2009]), some eighty points in and around central Athens (Mountjoy, [2005]), and about forty points in Cyprus (van Wijngaarden [2002]).

Anyone who would like to have a copy of the MAP database can send an e-mail to bobconsoli 'at' gmail.com or leave a comment on any of my posts.  

A large (about 2400 page) .pdf document which describes the entire database is available for the asking.

To run the MAP database requires a SQL server running on your desktop computer.   MySQL is such a server and it is powerful, industry-standard, and free.  

I can and will make .kml or .kmz files, which can be opened directly in Google Earth, available to those who would like them.  

I can also create .csv files for people who would like to import Mycenaean Atlas Project data into Google Earth but would like it in tabular form.

If you like these posts then please follow me on Twitter (Squinchpix) or on Google+   (Robert Consoli)

Facebook?  Sorry.I.just.can't.

Footnotes
[1] Ruthless People [1986].  It was written by Dale Launer and inspired by O. Henry's 'The Ransom of Red Chief'.
[2] Other languages are supported by this very rich API interface.

Bibliography

Farinetti [2009]: Farinetti, Emeri.  Boeotian landscapes: a GIS-based study for the reconstruction and interpretation of the archaeological datasets of ancient Boeotia. Ph.D. Dissertation.  University of Leiden, Netherlands, 2009.

Mountjoy [2005]: Mountjoy, Pamela.  Mycenaean Athens.  Paul Åströms Förlag, Jonsered, Sweden. 1995

van Wijngaarden [2002]:   van Wijngaarden, G.,  Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (ca. 1600 - 1200 BC).  Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and Amsterdam University Press. 2002.,

A Trove of Precise Locations in Bronze Age Cyprus

You are welcome, Sir, to Cyprus.  Goats and Monkeys!
Othello, iv, 1


Recently I’ve been adding locations in Cyprus to the Mycenaean Atlas Project.  From van Wijngaarden[1] I’ve derived a list of some 90 places where Mycenaean ceramics have been found.  I learn, somewhat to my surprise, that there is no definite evidence of Mycenaean settlement or colonization on Cyprus.  There is, of course, no shortage of papers that claim as much.[2]

Bronze Age sites in Andreou [2014]

The purpose of this post is to share with my readers a resource that turned up unexpectedly while reading about this island.  In Andreou’s study of Bronze Age Cyprus there is an appendix of more than 180 BA archaeological sites on Cyprus with their exact positions.[3]  This is a veritable treasure trove and although she presents her position data in a not-very-friendly form of UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator)[4]  in about twenty minutes I was able to take her entire list, establish a file, and convert it with a UTM to DMS converter.  I used this conversion site. 

The result was a glorious .kml file, suitable for opening in Google Earth, that you can safely pick up from my Google Drive account here. 

Kalavasos Valley according to Andreou [2014].

If you prefer this information in a comma separated file (.csv) you can download it from Google Drive here.

How good is her data?  Every measurement contains error.  So I did a bit of checking.  I do know where Kalavasos-Tenda is so I looked at her answer for that location:

Kalavasos-Tenda.

Kalavasos-Tenda is a Neolithic site in the Kalavasos valley in southern Cyprus.  The orange dot in the above photo is from my Features table.  Its position is 34.752469° N, 33.303370° E.  Dr. Andreou's location is the purple push pin.  That pin is about 10 meters from the closest edge of the 'tent'.  That distance of 10 meters is, as far as I'm concerned, more than acceptable in work of this kind.

Dr. Andreou’s data was very helpful for confirming my location for Erimi-Kafkalla.  

First let’s look at a sketch map.[5]

Erimi-Kafkalla is a large early BA settlement and necropolis in southern Cyprus.[6]  I make its position to be here: 34.688212° N, 32.916350° E. 

Now let’s look at it in Google Earth here.

The water tank is in the right position although there are two rather than Swiny's one.  The altitudes match; I have marked one of the places where Google Earth makes it to be 120 m. altitude.  The informal road to the west of the tank is now paved and what appears to be a large freeway at the bottom is new.  You can even make out the scatter of tombs which is so visible in Swiny's sketch map.

In this picture taken from Google Earth the blue dot is my position and the purple push pin is Dr. Andreou’s position.  She has placed Erimi-Kafkalla at 34.688086° N, 32.916886° E which is spot on and confirms my initial placement.

Her position for the Bronze Age Cypriot site at Erimi Laonin tou Porakou is less happy.  She has put it at 34.728969° N, 32.925616° E which is 1600 m. distant from the closest part of that site.

In the picture above we can see the situation.  Erimi-Laonin is positioned on a cliff to the left side (east) of the Kouris river.[7]  It is actually located on the same Kouris river and just to the north of Erimi-Kafkalla which was discussed above.  I have marked the position ( 34.711862° N, 32.923202° E) of Laonin as 'F2892'.  Her position would place it just to the east of the Kouris Dam which is not a helpful location for finding it.

Perhaps the biggest difference in Dr. Andreou's measurements is in respect to Maa Palaeokastro.  Let's look at the peninsula on which it sits.

In the 12 C BC the whole peninsula is thought to have been the site of a settlement.  The digs that have taken place there are best seen in the site that I've marked.  In the picture above we also see the hilariously named 'Museum of the Mycenaean Colonisation of Cyprus' which is shaped like an arrow in order to indicate the direction from which the first (Mycenaean) colonizers came.(!)[8]

Dr. Andreou's instincts have failed her just this once because she places the location of Maa at Paphos, as we see in the next photograph. Her location for Maa is 10+ km. from its real location which is at  34.853992° E, 32.363368° N.

Nevertheless, Dr. Andreou's points are still very valuable, particularly for the Kalavasos Valley on southern Cyprus which is an area that she seems to know best.  She has performed a very great service for anyone interested in prehistoric Cyprus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'll be going on vacation to Hawaii until April 5, 2017.  I'll be silent until then.  Perhaps, for a change of pace, I'll put up some pictures of Hawaii.

Anyone who would like to have a copy of the MAP database can send an e-mail to bobconsoli 'at' gmail.com or leave a comment on any of my posts.  To run the MAP database requires a SQL server running on your desktop computer.   MySQL is such a server and it is powerful, industry-standard, and free.  

I can and will make .kml or .kmz files, which can be opened directly in Google Earth, available to those who would like them.  

I can also create .csv files for people who would like to import Mycenaean Atlas Project data into Google Earth but would like it in tabular form.

Those who do not have a SQL server but would like the full database in .pdf form can have that for the asking.

If you like these posts then please follow me on Twitter (Squinchpix) or on Google+   (Robert Consoli)

Facebook?  Sorry.I.just.can't.

Footnotes

[1] van Wijngaarden [2002], 323 ff.

[2] The authoritative discussion of this topic is in Knapp [2013], 451 ff.  For the role that Cyprus plays in the Greek historical imagination see Michael [2005] passim.  Specifically see her remarks on Maa Palaeokastro beginning on p. 127.

[3] Andreou [2014], Appendix 2, pp. 428-437

[4]  For once Wikipedia is good for something.  See their description of UTM here. 

[5] Swiny [1979b], fig. 72.

[6] Swiny [1979a] 251 ff.

[7] For a useful discussion of the Italian effort there see this.

[8] Discussed in Michael [2005], 127 ff.

Bibliography

Andreou [2014]:  Andreou, Georgia-Marina, Traversing Space: Landscape and Identity in Bronze Age Cyprus, Ph.D. dissertation submitted to School of History, Classics and Archaeology, The University of Edinburgh, 2014.  Online here.

Knapp [2013]:  Knapp, A. Bernard.  The Archaeology of Cyprus; From Earliest Prehistory throught the Bronze Age.  Cambridge University Press.  2013.  ISBN: 978-0521723473

Michael [2005]: Michael, Angela Stella.  Making Histories: Nationalism, Colonialism and the Uses of the Past on Cyprus.  Thesis submitted for Ph.D., University of Glasgow.  June 2005.  Online here. 

Swiny [1979a]:  Swiny, Stuart. Southern Cyprus, 2000-1500 B.C.; Vol  I, Text.  Ph.D. thesis.  Institute of Archaeology,  University of London. 1979.

Swiny [1979b]: Swiny, Stuart. Southern Cyprus, 2000-1500 B.C.; Vol II, Figures. Ph.D. thesis. Institute of Archaeology, University of London. 1979.

van Wijngaarden [2002]: van Wijngaarden, G.,  Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (ca. 1600 - 1200 BC).  Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and Amsterdam University Press. 2002.  Online (more or less) here.