Glossary

Attestation

One piece of evidence: a statement that a source, for a date, gives a name, location, type, relation or other fact for a place. Each evidence row of the spreadsheets becomes one attestation.

Candidate

A match suggested by software between a place in your data and a record elsewhere, for a person to review. It is no one’s claim, and it never changes once published: a reviewer’s yes or no is an identity match that points back to it. See Candidate sets.

Candidate set

The candidates one run of matching software suggested for a dataset, published together beside the dataset, never inside it, and never changed afterwards. A later run is a new set.

Certainty

How sure whoever recorded a statement is of it, from 0 to 1. It reflects the evidence: better evidence could change it. Not the same as fuzziness. Where a dataset gives certainty in words, the certainty level records the word (‘Certain’, ‘LessCertain’, ‘Uncertain’) instead of a number. Certainty is never the source’s own hedging: that is its stance.

Citation

One attestation’s use of one source, with the locator saying where in the source the evidence is, and, where known, why the source is cited: as the evidence, as a source of data, as related reading.

Computed value

A value software worked out from other data, such as a journey’s overall dates from the dates of its stops. Platforms mark such values when they export them, because they are not evidence; they should never be entered as if a source had given them.

Connection

Two places joined directly: ConnectedTo either way, LeadsTo one way. Figures about a connection, such as the number of letters sent, go in the connections sheet.

CSVW (CSV on the Web)

The W3C standard used to describe the spreadsheet tables: their columns, allowed values, how they refer to one another and how rows become RDF.

Date, from, to

Date is the date as the source gives it, or “undated”, kept in the source’s own words. From and to are the earliest and latest years or days it can mean, written with at least four-digit years.

Denial

A source’s statement that something was not so, such as “no market here”. It is recorded as an attestation marked as denied, about the real place, so that nothing that never existed has to be invented.

Duration

How long something lasted, where the source says so: a stay of six weeks, written P42D. It may be given with dates or without them.

Editorial form

A name written by the editors of an edition in their own words, in its commentary or notes, rather than in the text they edit. Recorded with the form status Editorial, so that it is not read as the source’s own.

Fuzziness

The sense in which something genuinely has no sharp edge, such as “the Levant” or a gradual change of rule. It is a property of the thing, not of our knowledge of it, so it is different from certainty.

Gazetteer

In PLATO, a dataset of places and the evidence about them, such as yours: the about sheet of the spreadsheets, and the gazetteer header of a JSON document, describe it. In everyday use, also a reference list of places, such as GeoNames or Pleiades.

Headword

The form of a name under which an editor or survey files an entry. An editorial decision rather than a reading.

Ibid. (ibidem), idem

“The same (source) as before”. Where an editor has worked out which source was meant, the attribution is inferred.

Identity match

A statement that a place in your data is the same as a record elsewhere, such as in Pleiades or Wikidata, and how closely: an exact match, a close match, only related, or not said (unspecified). The spreadsheets record it in the identities sheet, JSON in identityRelations.

Itinerary

A journey someone actually made, through places in order, with each stop dated as far as the source allows. Compare route.

JSON-LD

A way of writing linked data as JSON. PLATO’s JSON-LD context turns a JSON document into RDF.

Locator

Where in a source the evidence is: a page, folio, column or entry number.

Member

A place that belongs to a route, journey or network, recorded with the relation MemberOf. Its position in the order is its sequence.

Meta-attestation

An attestation about another attestation rather than about a place: recording that some evidence, someone else’s or your own, is supported, contradicted, replaced, withdrawn, commented on, or an alternative reading to another. It lets corrections and disagreements be kept, not written over.

Network

A set of places and the connections between them, in no single order: a river system, a canal network, a web of correspondents.

Normalised form

A spelling made up for searching or matching, attested by no source.

Place

In this guide, as in everyday speech, somewhere a source talks about. PLATO gives the word no special meaning: its own term is SpatialEntity. The spreadsheets’ places sheet holds SpatialEntities.

RDF

The W3C standard data model for linked data, in which the PLATO ontology is written.

Route

A way through places in order, such as a road or a pilgrimage route. Its dates, if any, are when it was in use, not when anyone travelled it. Compare itinerary.

Segment

The stretch between two places on a route or in a network, such as a leg of a road or a reach of a river, when the source says something about it. It is a row in the places sheet of its own, typed segment, with its ends given by BeginsAt and EndsAt (or HasEnd, if it has no direction).

Sequence

A member’s position on a route or journey, as the source orders it. Equal numbers are alternatives; no number means the source gives no order.

Source

A document, map, book or dataset that evidence comes from. A source can be derived from another, as a copy or an edition. It can carry its licence, the licence of the copy you cite, so that anyone using your data can see which sources may be reused.

SpatialEntity

PLATO’s term for the thing attestations are about. Many SpatialEntities are places in the everyday sense; others are routes, networks, administrative units or the regions historical periods apply to. What kind each is comes from type attestations.

Stance

How firmly a source itself says something. Most sources simply assert, but some pass a claim on without vouching for it (“it is said”), hedge it, or raise it and leave it undecided. That is recorded as the source’s stance, separately from how sure you are: you can be quite certain that a source hedged. Leaving a thing undecided is not denying it (see Denial).

temPlato

PLATO’s spreadsheet template: ten linked sheets, as an Excel workbook or as CSV files, for putting data into PLATO’s shape without software.

Type

What kind of thing a place is, such as a market town, a river or a road, usually taken from a published vocabulary such as the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, with the vocabulary’s web address. The spreadsheets record it in the types sheet.

URI

A web address used as a permanent identifier, such as https://www.geonames.org/2654675/.