The use of computational methods for ancient world geography are still very much dominated by the URI based gazetteer. These powerful and flexible reference lists, trail-blazed by projects such as the Pleaides and Pelagios projects, allow resources to be linked by common spatial referents they share. However, while computers love URIs unconditionally, the relationship they have with place is more ambivalent: a simmering critical tension which has given rise to what we call the Spatial Humanities. This critical tension between the ways humanists see place and the way computers deal with it has highlighted important geo-philosophical principles for the study of the ancient world. For me, one of the most important of these is the principle that places as entities which exist in some form of human discourse such as text, and places as locations which can be situated within the (modern) framework of latitude and longitude, must be separated. Gazetteers allow us to do this, which is why they are so important.
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