Reshaping Byzantine Bithynia, or Connecting Archaeology and History Online: A Preliminary Report on the Mapping Byzantine Bithyna Online (MBBO) Project
Abstract
The main objective of the Mapping Byzantine Bithynia Online (MBBO) project is to make
accessible a set of information collected during several French surveys carried out in
Bithynia, a region in northwestern Turkey extending from the southern shore of the Sea of
Marmara to Mount Olympos (Uludağ) and from Lake Apolyont to the Sangarios (Sakarya)
River (Fig. 1). MBBO aims to bring together a large amount of historical and archaeological
data according to selected themes, to create and manage a spatial geo-database, and to
make these data cartographically manipulable through computer queries. Among the case
studies integrated into this program, our project is particularly interested in the Byzantine
heritage in the region of Bithynia. The approach is firmly anchored in the emerging field of
digital humanities applied to archaeological and historical sciences.