What qualifies for the curated atlas
Public value
A record must materially improve understanding of Manx archaeology, a documented discovery, a recorded casualty or a confirmed GPR project. This is a curated atlas, not an exhaustive list of every stray coin or object.
Identifiable evidence
The event, object or place needs a stable identity and a traceable primary or official source. A generic anecdote, duplicated Historic Environment Record entry or unsupported inherited label is not enough.
Responsible publication
The record needs an honest public-location treatment. Exact public monuments may be points; historic finds are normally broad areas; private, burial, confidential and under-described locations are withheld.
Editorial restraint
Sparse but valid records can be included with their limits stated. Lower-significance repetitions are deferred when they add targeting risk or catalogue volume without distinct historical value.
Evidence hierarchy
- 1 — Primary public record
Current legislation, the Isle of Man Historic Environment Record, Manx National Heritage records, excavation or survey reports, archive catalogues and official wreck records.
- 2 — Scholarly interpretation
Peer-reviewed papers, academic monographs and named university research projects, checked against the primary record where possible.
- 3 — Responsible secondary account
Reputable reporting that identifies people, dates and underlying evidence. It can explain a record but should not silently become the coordinate authority.
- 4 — Tradition or unresolved claim
Folklore, oral history and inherited catalogue text are labelled as such. They are not upgraded into archaeological fact through repetition.
Coordinate policy
Point
Used only for a publicly documented feature or visitor landmark where the mapped point is the feature itself. The stated uncertainty still matters.
Area
A public centroid and radius communicate a bounded locality without pretending the centre is the original findspot. This is the normal treatment for approximate wreck positions and broad survey areas. Sensitive generalized centroids use at most three decimal places: mapped private-property contexts also use at least 250 metres and historical findspots at least 100 metres. The sole higher-precision, smaller-radius case is the explicitly reviewed public visitor-site context at Peel Castle.
Location withheld
No public coordinates are emitted into the HTML, map data, metadata or structured data. A parish or general region may be named only when the source already does so responsibly.
No geometry
The evidence supports the event or object but not a defensible public position. The record remains readable but stays out of the map and spatial structured data.
Evidence confidence labels
Confirmed
The record is directly supported by an official record, primary evidence or published research.
Approximate
Material evidential details remain unresolved, although the record has enough support to include with that limitation stated.
Interpreted
The record relies on a stated synthesis or interpretation across sources rather than a single conclusive account.
Quarantine, not silent deletion
Inherited records do not enter the curated dataset by default. A legacy claim stays in review until a person can resolve its identity, trace a source, correct or justify its geometry, and assess whether the location should be public.
The old URL remains a noindex review stub so readers and search engines receive an honest status instead of an unsafe page or unexplained 404. Legacy coordinates, “find targets”, access claims and seasonal advice are withheld from those stubs.
Coordinate precision is not confidence
Six decimal places can still be wrong by kilometres. We store an uncertainty estimate and coordinate basis separately from factual confidence, then round displayed coordinates to a precision the evidence can support.
Ongoing limits
The Isle of Man Historic Environment Record is the authoritative starting point, but no public index is complete or error-free. Wreck positions can be especially uncertain. This site records when evidence was checked and welcomes sourced corrections.