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Annotation of Geographical Data (May 4)
May 4, 2016: 17h00-18h15 CEST
Chiara Palladino (University of Bari and Leipzig) and Maxim Romanov (University of Leipzig)
The session addresses the problem of annotating and visualizing geographical data, focusing on premodern sources (Graeco-Roman and Classical Arabic) as a case study. The description of space in antiquity and the Middle Ages was substantially different from the Modern Age, and it used peculiar paradigms and concepts. Such data can be defined in terms of toponyms, spatial divisions, itineraries, landmarks, orientation points, and so on. Recording this type of information in a digital environment through annotation can contribute to a large variety of research purposes, not only for understanding space in itself, but also to focus on historical and social aspects.
- General introduction
- Geographical information in the digital environment: annotating geographical entities
- Creating geographical data (georeferencing printed maps)
- Using geography to understand other things: applications
- Mapping travels in the premodern world: Orbis and al-Thurayya
- Reading texts through geography: Hestia
- Social geography of the Islamic world in 600-1300 CE
- Choose a simulated itinerary on Orbis, selecting places and networks of your choice or using your own dataset (for those who already have a project focused on geographical sources). OR
- Build a travel itinerary in the 10th century Islamic world, using the Interactive Geographical Model of the Islamic World (inspired by Orbis) (http://maximromanov.github.io/projects/althurayya_03/): 1) select “Pathfinding”; 2) keep adding places that you want to visit. You can try to recreate the itinerary of Nasir-e Khusraw, a “traditional” map of which can be found at http://nasirkhusraw.iis.ac.uk/journey. Alternatively, you can try to use the same workflow with your own data. (NB: the network cannot be saved at the moment, but you can take a screenshot). OR
- Georeferencing with QGIS (http://www.qgis.org/en/site/): the most efficient way to collect geographical information (coordinates) about a large number of mapped/mappable entities.
Discuss the importance of the spatial dimension for the understanding of a specific research topic, taken from history, sociology, literature, etc.); then, think about how digital methods of annotation and visualization could help in studying and representing the relation between geography and the chosen subject.
- Tom Elliott and Sean Gillies (2009), “Digital Geography and Classics”, Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1, Available: http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000031/000031.html
- Øyvind Eide, The area told as a story: An inquiry into the relationship between verbal and mapbased expressions of geographical information, Chapters 1 (Introduction) and 2 (Maps and Landscapes): https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/12582566/Studentthesis-Oyvind_Eide_2013.pdf
- Walter Scheidel (2013), “The shape of the Roman World”, in Princeton/Stanford working papers in Classics: http://orbis.stanford.edu/
- Elton Barker, Stefan Bouzarovski, Chris Pelling and Leif Isaksen (2010), "Mapping an ancient historian in a digital age: the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Image Archive (HESTIA)". In Leeds International Classical Studies, 9 (2010) article no. 1. http://oro.open.ac.uk/20528/1/hestia_lics2010.pdf
- TEI Manual c. 13: People, Dates and Places: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/it/html/ND.html
- EpiDoc Guidelines: Provenance of the Text-Bearing Object: http://www.stoa.org/epidoc/gl/latest/supp-history.html
- Maxim Romanov, A DH Exercise: Mapping the Greco-Roman World: http://maximromanov.github.io/2015/04-02.html (this can also be used as an exercise proposal for students who have an already advanced project on ancient or medieval geography).