Historical GIS Research Articles

Japanese Lexical Variation Explained by Spatial Contact Patterns

In this paper, we analyse spatial variation in the Japanese dialectal lexicon by assembling a set of methodologies using theories in variationist linguistics and GIScience, and tools used in historical GIS. Based on historical dialect atlas data, we calculate a linguistic distance matrix across survey localities. The linguistic variation expressed through this distance is contrasted with several measurements, based on spatial distance, utilised to estimate language contact potential across Japan, historically and at present. Further, administrative boundaries are tested for their separation effect. Measuring aggregate associations within linguistic variation can contrast previous notions of dialect area formation by detecting continua. Depending on local geographies in spatial subsets, great circle distance, travel distance and travel times explain a similar proportion of the variance in linguistic distance despite the limitations of the latter two. While they explain the majority, two further measurements estimating contact have lower explanatory power: least cost paths, modelling contact before the industrial revolution, based on DEM and sea navigation, and a linguistic influence index based on settlement hierarchy. Historical domain boundaries and present day prefecture boundaries are found to have a statistically significant effect on dialectal variation. However, the interplay of boundaries and distance is yet to be identified. We claim that a similar methodology can address spatial variation in other digital humanities, given a similar spatial and attribute granularity.

Deceptive Contiguity: The Polygon in Spatial History

The polygon is the most common vector data model used to represent political entities in spatial history and historical GIS. When it comes to visualizing the entangled, complex political geography of early modern societies, however, discrete, contiguous features can be a problematic cartographic choice. One example explored in detail here is the aggressive enserfment of foreign peasants by the Electoral Palatinate in the seventeenth-century Holy Roman Empire. The comparison of an older map of these events with GIS maps based on new data shows how the polygons on the older map exaggerate the extent of Palatine expansion and suggest a continuous distribution of phenomena that were really discontinuous. Indeed, in early modern political geography, the polygon often operates as the cartographic equivalent of problematic concepts such as absolutism and sovereignty. Though point-based maps offer more accurate representations of pre-modern spatial orders, they hinge on the availability of geospatial data. Discussing the potential and limitations of different kinds of spatial data available to early modern historians today, the conclusion calls for a more argument-driven spatial history of early modernity.

Japanese Map Warper for Spatial Humanities: The Japanese old maps portal site

Abstract. Since the middle of the 2000s, digital humanities (DH) involving the collaboration and uniting of research fields from both the humanities and sciences has begun developing rapidly. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of knowledge through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). It is expected to create a new knowledge base within the humanities; history, linguistics, literature, art, files, and so on. By definition, a new field of digital humanities is technical driven given its elaborate use of computing, and is also distinctly interdisciplinary through the ICT (Kawashima et al., 2009). At the same time, “spatial turns” are referred to throughout the academic disciplines, often with reference to GIS and the neogeography revolution that puts mapping (Guldi, 2018).As human geography would be a part of the humanities, so all research within human geography can be a part of digital humanities. Geo-spatial information that is dealt with in geography possesses geo-referenced data. GIS has also become popular in digital humanities. The application of GIS within history is facilitating the formation of a new area of research, historical GIS (Gregory and Healy, 2007). Historical geographers have been making use of GIS as a research tool, applying it to historical space within a geographical context. However now we see historians beginning to use GIS within their own research. So far, the relation between human geography and history has been compared to the difference between the dimensions of space and time. While geographers make extensive use of maps focusing on spatial patterns of their temporal changes (spatial process), historians make use of ancient documents as a resource focusing on the temporal relationship between phenomena (Knowles, 2008).To ensure a leaping development in the new project-based research style through interdisciplinary and international collaboration within Historical GIS in Japan, and by extension traditional humanities in Japan, it is of great urgency to build portal sites that can provide comprehensive and lateral search of Japanese old maps which are fundamental materials, while making GIS analysis possible.The aim of this paper is to introduce Japanese Map Warper (bilingual version), based on an online georeferenced tool developed by Mr Tim Waters in 2009, and to construct a portal site of Japanese old maps which can be embedded into GIS.

Mapping Space, Sense and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City, eds Nicholas Terpstra and Colin Rose

<i>Mapping Space, Sense and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City</i>, eds Nicholas Terpstra and Colin Rose

Mapping Uncertainty

Abstract This historical GIS experiment attempts to map the collapse of the kingdom of Oyo alongside the departure of slave ships from the Bight of Benin. The achievements and drawbacks of mapping Africa’s pre-colonial past require an overview of the sources and methods used to illustrate the dissolution and formation of inland places during an intense period of intra-African conflict. By collating geopolitical data, it is possible to represent on annual maps the likely origins and migrations of diverse groups of enslaved people who were involved in the warfare in the Bight of Benin hinterland between 1816 and 1836. During this period, an unknown number of captives were enslaved and forced into an internal slave trade, most especially into the Sokoto Caliphate, while over 75,000 individuals involuntarily boarded European slave ships leaving for Brazil, Cuba and, due to British abolition efforts, Sierra Leone.

Reconstructing historical rural addresses with VGI and digitized aerial photography

This paper describes an attempt to develop a historical GIS of farms with metadata from digitized aerial photography. With the current effort of mass digitization, wide ranges of new data sources are becoming available to historical scholars. However, for these digital sources to be included in new scholarship, a prerequisite is the research infrastructure necessary to process them. Our project has examined how metadata on digitized aerial photography, generated by volunteers in the Royal Danish Library’s crowdsourcing effort, might provide a short cut to historical GIS infrastructure, which would otherwise require significant resources to build. As part of the digitization of thousands of aerial photographs of rural properties, the library had the help of volunteers to geolocate each photograph. As each photograph often represented a single property, the data points and their metadata are representative of a certain address. This paper outlines the steps we took to develop the raw material into a dataset containing locations of historical rural addresses. Based on a pilot study of a limited area, we discuss the quality and accuracy of the data resulting from our approach. We found that the overall quality of data extracted is acceptable compared with the traditional approach of manually plotting in farm-localities by hand.

AN INITIAL DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR VIRTUAL HISTORIC DUBLIN

Abstract. As a single coherent model, the proposed Virtual Historic Dublin City will improve the current approaches for planning, conserving, presenting and interpreting cultural heritage buildings and their environments. The combination of digital recording, modelling and data management systems enable the interaction with complex, interlinked three-dimensional structures containing rich and diverse underlying data. End users can encompass architectural and engineering conservation, education and research, in addition to public engagement and cultural tourism. In this paper a digital design framework is presented, based on state of the art current approaches for recording, modelling and presenting Virtual Historic Dublin. The modelling sites and structures is based on remotely sensed survey data which is processed and modelled in Historic BIM or GIS allowing the addition of semantic attributes. Archiving and storage of both models and knowledge and information attributes requires open systems and server data base capable of handling vector and point cloud information in addition to other digital data. The dissemination and interaction with the models and attached knowledge attributions is based on combining game engine platforms, Historic BIM, Historic GIS and access to compatible storage and data base.

Infant mortality in mid‐19th century Amsterdam: Religion, social class, and space

AbstractThis study uses a unique historical GIS dataset compiled from birth, death, and population register records for infants born in the city of Amsterdam in 1851 linked to micro‐level spatial data on housing, infrastructure, and health care. Cox's proportional hazards models and the concept of egocentric neighbourhoods were used to analyse the effects of various sociodemographic characteristics, residential environment, water supply, and health‐care variables on infant mortality and stillbirth. The analyses confirm the favourable position of the Jewish population with respect to infant mortality as found in other studies and show the unfavourable position of orthodox Protestant minorities. Infant mortality rate differences are much smaller between social classes than between religions. The exact role of housing and neighbourhood conditions vis‐a‐vis infant mortality is still unclear; however, we ascertained that effects of environmental conditions are more pronounced in later stages of infancy and less important in the early stages of infancy.

Follow the road: historical GIS for evaluating the development of routes in the Negev region during the twentieth century

ABSTRACTAt the beginning of the twentieth century, a British mapping team led by Captain S. F. Newcombe surveyed and mapped the Negev region, Sinai, and western Jordan. The map was mainly produced for military use. Consequently, it included a network of branched routes, water supplies and facilities, and topographic contours. This study used this map to examine the development of routes in the Negev region between the beginning of and until the end of the twentieth century. First, the individual sheets comprising the study area were pieced together and the accuracy of the map was evaluated. The accuracy found on the Newcombe map was 0.76 mm on the map scale, equivalent to 100.3 m. Route development during the twentieth century was then evaluated by comparing the routes digitized from the Newcombe map to digitized routes on a late twentieth-century map. The results do not reveal tremendous changes in path, shape, or number of routes. Instead, they merely indicate the natural development in their quality. This Historical GIS-based approach provided a useful technique for analyzing and comparing the line segments extracted from historical and modern maps. The implemented approach may also serve other geographical or historical studies aiming to examine the development of branched networks throughout history.

Public participatory historical GIS

Building historical geographic information system (HGIS) datasets is time consuming and very expensive, especially when built at the scales that permit analysis of the lived experiences of individuals or the morphology of buildings or streets. Further, these datasets are often built exclusively in the academy, with little input from the contemporary communities they represent. In this paper, we review the use of the public in crowdsourcing historical data creation, and using the Keweenaw Time Traveler set in Michigan’s Copper Country as a case study, we call for a new approach to HGIS scholarship that includes a robust public partnership to building HGIS datasets. The creation of a public participatory HGIS approach to HGIS scholarship can increase efficiencies of, public relevance in, and extend the reach of, HGIS projects beyond the academy. We have established a set of best practices that include, incorporating the public in the HGIS interface design, providing immediate public data access, contextualization of spatial data in space-time, comprehensive public history outreach in person and online, and creating affordances for the public to contribute their own historical spatial knowledge through spatial storytelling. Together, these activities can promote the long-term sustainability and success of historical data crowdsourcing projects.

Historical GIS: application of map-based biography to the Laeva sovkhoz / state farm, Estonia

In the MODSCAPES project the concept of historical GIS is one of the practical research tools to detect, map, and analyse large-scale landscape changes caused by modernist rural development schemes. Historical GIS enables us to synthesise human interactions with their surrounding landscape on temporal and spatial axes. In this paper, historical GIS is applied to create a map-based biography of one of the case study examples, Laeva, which was a collective state farm orsovkhoz in South Estonia between 1975 and 1993. Through combining historical maps and archival data we followed the process of collectivisation in Laeva. The Laeva sovkoz was a result of nearly 30 years of trial and error in collective farming, which in the area started with the establishment of seven small kolkhozes in 1948 and 1949. In the 1950s the small kolkhozes were amalgamated into larger and more effective agricultural units. After several mergers and reorganisation of production, in 1975 the sovkhoz of Laeva was established. In the second half of the 1970s the sovkhoz became an experimental cattle and pig breeding research institute of the Estonian Agricultural Academy. We also compared the land use dynamics of the area before, during, and after the collectivisation. The results showed that during the collectivisation the pressure to cultivate land was intensified, and through extensive melioration wetlands were drained, and forested.

The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester

This article considers the problem of popular, collectively organized political action in the context of the abolition movement of the slave trade (1788–1807). Various primary sources, a petition, a trade directory, church records, and a self-built historic GIS are used to locate petitioners for abolition in the social fabric of Manchester. Through matching and computational experiments the article highlights which social structural forces led individuals to support the abolition movement by signing a petition. Specifically, gathering places that were historically involved in the movement, as well as those that housed traveling merchants from communities with successful abolitionist petitions from preceding campaigns shaped abolitionist petitioning—and the impact of these institutions remained important over and above family ties, active religious congregations, and the occupational groups. The article gives a new understanding of the role that early industrialization played in the abolition movement, building it from the bottom up, forging cohesion within and across communities through local institutions, rather than creating new boundaries and divides through processes of class formation.

An attempt to reconstruct selected elements of the original site topography of the Teutonic castles at Unisław and Starogród (Chełmno Land, Northern Poland) based on archaeological and cartographic data

Abstract The article presents an attempt to reconstruct the original site topographies of 13th-century Teutonic castles at Unisław and Starogród, which have not been preserved in the surface terrain. The archaeological remains of both castles are located in the west of Chełmno Land, on the edge of a moraine plateau 30 to 50 metres above the floor of the Vistula valley. The reconstruction used a research approach known as Historical GIS (HGIS), which, besides archaeological data, employs digitised historical cartographic sources. The research showed that changes in the original site topography are associated with anthropogenic transformations in the plateau surface, mainly due to agricultural use, and with retreat of the plateau edge resulting from natural and man-made landslide processes. The authors believe that the reconstruction of the castles’ original site topographies could be used to verify detailed hypotheses related to the conditions of their construction and operation.

Deepening Historical GIS: An Integrated Database Solution for Linking People, Place and Events through Unstructured Text

Primary historical source materials represent a very real challenge to GIS. In contrast to modern datasets where tabulated and structured data usually correspond neatly to fixed boundary units, primary historical source materials occur in predominantly unstructured text format. In these instances, people, events, and places must be unraveled from handwritten scripts and, if possible, subsequently linked and coupled to some form of mapping. In this paper, a database solution to handling primary source material is discussed that enables the original text and its translation to be ingested into the system and for people, familial relations, events, and images to be linked and queried in real time. In particular, the system connects these databases via toponyms to a tightly coupled mapping interface. The system enables thesauri of people's names and places to be created on-the-fly and allows levels of confidence to be assigned by the investigator to these matches. Full database and toponymic search and linking capability is enabled. In addition, a mobile application supports investigation in the field to access details in the databases at the same time as ingesting additional data and information in real-time to the system. Through the use of this dynamic database coupling and union to a map interface it is proposed that the system provides a powerful platform for use with primary unstructured source material and contributes to a deeper mapping and understanding of historical place.

SEH-SDB: a semantically enriched historical spatial database for documentation and preservation of monumental heritage based on CityGML

Cultural heritage has a great and inestimable value for communities. Unfortunately, several historical monuments are under deteriorating conditions mainly due to the lack of knowledge about their historical importance. Hence, it is necessary to provide efficient solutions to preserve these monuments. An effective approach for the preservation of cultural heritage should address two main aspects: documentation and information. The first aspect is related to methods that are used to document and digitally archive historic buildings by using appropriate materials and techniques for acquiring 3D spatial data. The second aspect aims to inform the population and policy makers about the importance of the historical heritage in a simple, effective, and interactive manner. In this paper, we propose an original approach to design a semantically enriched historical spatial database (SEH-SDB) for documentation and information of monumental heritage. First of all, a LiDAR acquisition of the historical heritage should be undertaken to capture its current condition. Then, the SEH-SDB database will be designed according to four semantic packages related to historical buildings that are (1) Components package, (2) Material package, (3) Historical package, and (4) Social package. The component package is based on the CityGML standard, which ensures a high interoperability for 3D models. The material package represents the material used in the construction of the building (wood, stone …). The historical package informs about historical elements that characterize the building and its temporal evolution. The social package aims to inform about the main social activities that may take place in the historical building. Based on the SEH-SDB, a 3D historical GIS is developed to provide rich semantic information about historical sites. At the end of this paper, a case study of a historical monument named “Ribat Banajah” in Jeddah Historical City in Saudi Arabia is presented. A digital archiving of the current state of this building is performed by using terrestrial LiDAR in combination with other classical surveying techniques (traversing, leveling, and GPS). Then, a building information model of this building is created and exported to the 3D HGIS designed for the documentation of historical buildings.

Research Report—"Mapping Political Economies Over Time: Teaching Regional Systems Theory With G.W. Skinner’s Historical GIS Datasets”

This study documents an ongoing project compiling and publishing open access Historical GIS manuals, and associated datasets, for teaching the Regional Systems approach to mapping historical world economies to undergraduate and graduate students with no prior knowledge of GIS. Regional Systems Theory was pioneered by the anthropologist G. W. Skinner (lived 1925-2008) to map and measure the effects of economic systems on social and cultural processes over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Preparing a two day GIS workshop for Arts and Humanities researchers

In winter 2018, we were approached to lead a two day (12 hour) workshop for arts and humanities researchers as part of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute: Technologies East (DHSITE) conference hosted by the University of Ottawa. The workshop, Introduction to Mapping and Spatial Methods for the Humanities, built upon a shorter offering presented by Sarah last year. It had a Historical GIS (HGIS) twist and was open in terms of datasets, software, and instructional materials.

Revisiting historical beech and oak forests in Indiana using a GIS method to recover information from bar charts.

Historical GIS involves applying GIS to historical research. Using a unique method, I recovered historical tree survey information stored in bar chart figures of a 1956 publication. I converted PDF files to TIF files, which is a format for a GIS layer. I then employed GIS tools to measure lengths of each bar in the TIF file and used a regression (R2 = 97%) to convert bar lengths to numerical values of tree composition. I joined this information to a spatial GIS layer of Indiana, USA. To validate results, I compared predictions against an independent dataset and written summaries. I determined that historically (circa 1799 to 1846) in Indiana, oaks were 27% of all trees, beech was 25%, hickories and sugar maple were 7% each, and ash was 4.5%. Beech forests dominated (i.e., >24% of all trees) 44% of 8.9 million ha (i.e., where data were available in Indiana), oak forests dominated 29%, beech and oak forests dominated 4.5%, and oak savannas were in 6% of Indiana, resulting in beech and/or oak dominance in 84% of the state. This method may be valuable to reclaim information available in published figures, when associated raw data are not available.

More than trees: The challenges of creating a geodatabase to capture the complexity of forest history

ABSTRACTEuropean forests have been copiously documented for centuries. However, forest-related archival sources were rarely utilised to their full potential, mainly because of the difficulties in producing compatible data from large amounts of very different sources. Furthermore, analysing such data for larger areas in high resolution was hardly possible prior to the emergence of historical GIS. This paper presents the geodatabase of the LONGWOOD project, which includes tens of thousands of pieces of information on forest history from the 11th to the 20th century for 3,567 townships in the eastern Czech Republic (c. 27,000 km2). The paper describes the challenges we met, briefly summarizes the results, evaluates the database in a worldwide context and introduces possible directions for future research.

“The Archaeological Picture Went Blank”: Historical Archaeology and GIS analysis of the Landscape of the Palestinian Village of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi

Referring to the dearth of historical archaeological research in Israel, in Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East, author Neil Silberman states: “Just as the story was beginning to get interesting—when the modern cultures of the region were in the process of formation—the archaeological picture went blank” (1989:233). Since Silberman published his book, the status of historical-archaeological research—notably of the Islamic and Ottoman periods in Israel—has certainly improved. To a large extent, the same cannot be said of archaeological research—either on objects, sites, or historic landscapes—relating to the British Mandate and the early years of the State of Israel.