More on Flickr: tags and timelines

The Etruscan ritual calendar called the Tabula Capuana; see more here.

In addition to the collections approach detailed in yesterday's post, Flickr also allows up to 75 tags per photo. I try to use these in two ways. There a bunch of general tags to start out with, to help steer in people from search engines. Then there are more specific ones meant to be useful from within the site. Among these, along with things like material ("marble," "bronze," "ceramic") and culture (a concept to be problematized, for sure, but handy in a pinch; e.g. "Egyptian," "Greek," "Etruscan") are, in particular, the chronology tags.

For instance, a photo could have the following tags:

        "5th c. BCE" "early 5th c. BCE" "1st half 5th c. BCE" "1st quarter 5th c. BCE" "490s BCE" "480s BCE" "470s BCE"

Decades are generally the smallest temporal denomination possible (unless there's a coin or an inscription that allows precision to the year, but those are rarely going to be useful when searching for other things). Of course, different categories of material can be dated with different degrees of precision. There are some prehistoric artifacts that just get, say, a "3rd millennium BCE" tag. I don't bother when it's 1st millennium BCE or CE, but just go directly to centuries. Plenty of things only datable to the century.

I generally only add decade tags when the thing in question can be dated to within a quarter-century. 

For the time being, there's no good front-end to just browse by chrono-tags. You can click on them from existing photos, or plug them in using the following URL, substituting 470sBCE for the relevant unit (e.g., 5thcBCE, early5thcBCE, 1stHalf5thcBCE, 1stQuarter5thcBCE... not case-sensitive):

        https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=7945858%40N08&tags=470sBCE

If you want to combine the chrono-tags with other tags, just add them after a comma, like so:

        https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=7945858%40N08&tags=470sBCE,bronze

In addition to the material and culture tags above, I'll add the shape (hydria, column krater) for ceramics, figures depicted (Theseus or Artemis - this can get tricky for gods, since you're likely to end up with photos of their temples or sanctuaries; if you just want photos of representations of the deity, you may be better off using the Gods, heroes, and mythical creatures collection), or just what the thing is (grater, figurine). As the scope of the project has increasingly come to focus on Italy, I've tried to add most tags in both English and Italian (beyond any other locally-relevant languages). The chrono-tags are only in English, though; the 75-tag limit doesn't make it feasible otherwise.

Not immediately relevant to searching directly via Flickr, but I also want to mention here Pleiades machine-tags. These are a way of integrating photos in Flickr (not just mine!) with the ancient-world linked-data gazetteer that is Pleiades (you all already know about Pleiades, I hope). There are a couple of write-ups from back when these were first implemented, here and here, but in short: I can add a machine tag to a photo, let's say.: pleiades:findspot=432754 That code links to the site of Capua on Pleiades. There, on the right-hand sidebar, you'll see "132 other related photos" (more in the near future, probably!). Clicking on that will get you all of the photos on Flickr which have been tagged as either depicting Capua or as of artifacts with a findspot of Capua. If you're uploading photos of ancient stuff to Flickr, I recommend adding Pleiades machine tags! If not, if you leave your tags open, I might add them myself... 

(Ancientists reading this, I'd love to hear your thoughts on chronological definitions: I've got a pretty good idea of when the concept of the "early 5th c. BCE" begins, but when, in your mind, does it end? When does it become "mid 5th c. BCE"?  Also, I'd be interested to hear of other ways of dividing centuries. I once saw them divided by thirds in a museum in Germany. Absolute mad lads.)