Questions regarding GIS in history with Placing History

Hillier, Amy, and Anne Kelly Knowles. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship. EsriPress, Inc., 2008.

What is Historical GIS?

Historical GIS is an interdisciplinary and challenging approach to represent history in its geographic context and use geographic information to illuminate the past. It requires the use of many interdisciplinary skills such as cartography, graphic design, analysis and interpretation of maps, textual analysis and bias interpretation (3).

What is the Value of Teaching with GIS?

Other than teaching GIS itself, there are four main values that students can gain by learning how to use and interpret GIS. GIS can teach analytical and problem-solving strategies; such can be seen from maps about the socioeconomic impact of redrawing district boundaries. It takes thoughtful analytical skills to evaluate the presented information for potential impacts on communities. GIS also brings value to education by teaching students the importance of visualization. Visuals can be scientific, draw people in, and break down language barriers which can be helpful to any argument put forth by a student. Teaching political and social issues is another value of educating students on GIS, such as mapping out indigenous territory in Brazil which could help defend native’s lands from logging. Lastly, GIS can be a form of pedagogy by letting students map out congressional districts according to population to their vision of what is fair and analyze current congressional boundaries such as ones in their own town. This can be a great teaching method for understanding the concept of Gerrymandering and is just one example of GIS as pedagogy (63-71).

What are the Implications of GIS for the Discipline of History?

GIS has many different uses in the discipline. One such use is show cased by the Peutinger Map project detailed in chapter eight. The traditionally accepted reason to use this map, as was the reason for its creation, was to show the map of the Roman world in terms of settlements and roads. However, this project used GIS to answer if the map’s primary purpose was indeed to show the network of Roman roads. The project found that it did not, and it was done in terms of geography by creating a layer in GIS of just roads and just geography which shows where most of the detail was. Additionally, the map was ported over into GIS on a traditional map with settlements and roads being laid in conjunction with geography in an effort to represent the map in more usable terms. This project showed one of the primary uses for GIS in the discipline, which is to ask new questions or reevaluate old questions in new ways by using new methodologies and tools (199-218). GIS was also used to map the husbandry in Concord which besides revisiting old questions with new tools, this project showcased the use of GIS in local history and as a method to connect the people with their past and help with local preservation as this project did by looking at farming locations and land ownership change (151-178).

How are Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Changing Historical Scholarship?

Maps and spatial data in general are changing historical scholarship by brining in a more interdisciplinary approach to not only better evaluate historical sources, but to answer questions with better scholarly accuracy. The Peutinger Map, for example, was a map that was being used to trace the locations of archaeological materials and understanding how the Romans understood their world. However, GIS and spatial data have showed that the traditional scholarship were wrong about their interpretation on the map’s road-oriented purpose and elucidated it as geographically centric. This displays that GIS can be used as a useful tool for historians to use to assist in their scholarship. History has always had elements that were spatially oriented, and GIS and spatial data can now assist in understanding those elements of history with more clarity (199-218).

First attempt at Text-Mining. What is Big Data?

Text-mining is a method that uses tools to see trends in data sets that are too large to search through conventional means, otherwise known as Big Data. These tools use computer technology to read the vast amounts of data for whatever input given, usually a word or phrase, and processes the findings in some presentable way. A lot of different tools present their findings in different ways from word clouds to graphs and each have their uses. The tools can be divided into two groups, with one focusing on searching a particular document, while others focus on searching a database full of documents.

The tool I choose to use was Google’s Ngram program. I wanted to track the nomenclature of the area I have started studying, underwater archaeology. The field is split amongst different terms each with its own implicit meaning, nautical archaeology and maritime archaeology relating to ship archaeology, marine archaeology referring to ocean related archaeology, and underwater archaeology which is an all-encompassing term of all archaeology done under water, however a ship focused archaeological term does not necessarily have to always be underwater. There has always been a debate surrounding which term to use when referring to the field, which there is no shortage of participants in the field taking up their own preferred term over others. I wanted to apply this nomenclature to Google’s Ngram program and see which term comes up the most often on Google Scholar.

The parameters for the search are set from the years 1800 to 2000 and the terms used for the search are as follows: maritime archaeology, nautical archaeology, underwater archaeology, marine archaeology. The chart that follows was particularly interesting as it showed underwater archaeology as the most dominate term to get hits within the database followed by maritime, marine, and nautical. Nautical archaeology was the earliest term appearing with a particular uptick in the 1930s before dropping off. The next significant uptick of all terms comes with the advent of the SCUBA unit in the 1950s as one might naturally think as the SCUBA unit is what allowed this exploration of submerged cultural remains. The latest term to appear with significant usage is maritime archaeology which doesn’t start to gain significant usage until 1974 and gradually out paces all other terms save for underwater archaeology. Interestingly enough, I changed the search parameters to up to the latest year Ngram allows which is 2008. This increase of eight years of content actually caused a dramatic shift in the findings as underwater archaeology drastically drops off and falls behind maritime archaeology. In fact, all terms are on a decline of usage from 2000 to 2008 almost as much of a decline seen in the early 1990s, which serve as a universal low point in the usage of these terms since the invention of the SCUBA unit.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=maritime+archaeology%2C+nautical+archaeology%2C+underwater+archaeology%2C+marine+archaeology&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmaritime%20archaeology%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cnautical%20archaeology%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cunderwater%20archaeology%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmarine%20archaeology%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cmaritime%20archaeology%3B%2Cc1%3B.t1%3B%2Cnautical%20archaeology%3B%2Cc1%3B.t1%3B%2Cunderwater%20archaeology%3B%2Cc1%3B.t1%3B%2Cmarine%20archaeology%3B%2Cc1

Furthermore, this tool allows you to click and search on the terms and see the hits that were provided. A few of the searches for the terms based on time parameters (such as 1800-1950) provide a list of documents and when one is selected a webpage with a scan of every page with the searched term on it within the document is displayed which allows for the not only where the term appears within the selected text, but its context as well. Additionally, a word cloud is even provided based on the text with other similar words and their frequency and if you click on one of the words in the word cloud the page changes its searched term in the text to show scans of the chosen term with its every appearance and context. This is incredibly helpful as it helps defeat one of the criticisms of Big Data which is its lack of transparency and lack of transition from far reading to close reading. However, these extra features such as the word frequency and word clouds do not appear for most texts and this does seem to be in the minority of searches I have done.

Overall, I think using Ngram served my purposes well. I can easily see which terms were the most popular in relation to each other and the tool was simple to use. The ability that Ngram can display word clouds and show text searchable pdfs with every hit of that term within the text all on the same page makes this program have the potential to satisfy a lot the workflow needs when it comes to Big Data. The trend in relation to SCUBA diving is clear to see and if I were to dedicate more time to exploring this concept, I am sure there is more to be gleaned such as the sparse mentions of nautical archaeology before the creation of the SCUBA unit and the downward trend in the early 1990s and post 2000s.

What is Digital History? Selected Readings, 1999-2019

1999: Edward L. Ayers, "The Pasts and Futures of Digital History" (Links to an external site.)

2004: William G. Thomas III, "Computing and the Historical Imagination," (Links to an external site.) in A Companion to Digital Humanities

2006:  Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Ch. 1,  ”Promises and Perils of Digital History,” (Links to an external site.) in Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web

2008: JAH Interchange: The Promise of Digital History (Links to an external site.)

2009: Douglas Seefeldt and William G.  Thomas III, "What is Digital History?" (Links to an external site.) in AHA Perspectives

2016: Stephen Robertson, "The Differences Between Digital Humanities and Digital History" (Links to an external site.) in Debates in the Digital Humanities

2017: Sharon Leon, "Returning Women to the History of Digital History" (Links to an external site.)

2019: Sheila A. Brennan, "Digital History" (Links to an external site.) in NCPH's The Inclusive Historian's Handbook

What is Digital History? (JAH Interchange, Thomas, et al.)

“Digital history might be understood broadly as an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the internet network, and software systems.” (Thomas)

I believe that this is a great definition of digital history and is broad enough to include all software and projects that would be included. From quantitative datasheets, to GIS, videos, photogrammetry, and even search tools and self-publishing, digital history can be applied to old research or be entirely digital from the start and ask a new question through the lens of digital tools.

How does 21st century Digital History theory/practice differ from earlier applications of computer technology to historical research, such as the data-driven quantitative history (“cliometrics”) of the 1970s? (Thomas)

Digital history started in the 1970s as cliometrics, or quantitative history, and consisted of statistical methods. Quantitative history was controversial during the 1970s and through the 1980s because it focused too much on quantitative data and computers without much human analysis of the datasets. Digital history today starkly contrasts that of the 1970s because it has expanded rapidly with the creation of the internet and the advancements of hardware and software. Digital history is not just about quantitative data, which can be useful in its own right, but encapsulates anything adapted to the computer systems.

How does Digital History differ from Digital Humanities? (Robertson)

Digital history is a subset of the digital humanities. Digital history is centered around a few digital tools that benefits historical research. Text mining and topic modeling are two tools in the digital historian’s toolbox as well as search tools, web-based mapping programs, and quantitative tools. Digital Humanities has often been described as being too broad focusing on too many tools whereas each discipline within digital humanities already know and use a small set of digital tools to aid in their specific workflow. Often thought of casting too wide a net in terms of digital tools for only one area of study. Thereby digital history is a more specified subset of digital humanities with fewer tools and with research and skills highly focused in regard to those tools. There has been a call, however, to shift the view of the digital humanities into being a more interdisciplinary approach of learning the tools in your specific field and then engaging with other disciplines within the digital humanities.

What are the promises/perils of doing Digital History? (Ayers, Cohen & Robertson, JAH Interchange)

Some of the promises of digital humanities are capacity, accessibility, flexibility, diversity, manipulability and interactivity. Capacity and accessibility being the two most obvious with more information than ever before being stored onto a computer or the internet with a greater ease of access than before the computer era. More people can visit digital archives from across the world for little to no cost, can access academic journals, and are not restricted by a physical or cumbersome limit that computers can alleviate. The information we access on the web is also incredibly flexible in its presentation, instead of a limited presentation of text and pictures in person, the humanities can present itself as text, photos, videos, sounds, 3D models, data sheets, and any combination of these forms. Diversity focuses mainly on the low barrier of entry for everyone to enter information on a topic of their interest. It is just not professors who are able to maintain blogs on their research but anyone from an amateur in the humanities to the most esteemed professor. Manipulability of the large amounts of information stored online are also a possibility that is not shared in the physical form. Using digital tools to quickly shift through entire journals for keywords or phrases. Interactivity makes it easier than ever to communicate between individuals, quick messaging and interactions between professor and public made the dissemination of information easier. Hypertexuality is the last of the seven beneficial promises of the digital history, and is simply the free flow of information in an undirected way

              Some of the perils of digital history can be seen related to its benefits. Information does not last forever on the internet and with the low entry bar for entering information on a topic, quality likewise suffers. Additionally, the way people approach information online with manipulability change the way people read thus lowering the requirement to read through the text the author crafted in the way it was intended. Lastly, the problem of inaccessibility comes into play, everyone does not have a computer and skills required to use it. Monopoly, too, runs along with inaccessibility with corporations taking interest in and profiting off of the flow of information with questionable care of authenticity.

Can we make Digital History, as a field, more inclusive? (Leon, Brennan)

Digital history has taken steps to become more inclusive by way of free to use publishing, editing, and by including histories about marginalized groups. However, this is also how digital history can improve its inclusivity, the best stories are told by the people themselves and the jobs of professors and museum curators will best reflect minority stories if they are the minority themselves. Creating, publishing, and collaborating have become large advancements to reach and spread more stories but institutionalizing the more marginalized stories would be the best path for reaching inclusivity.

The Digital Humanities and 3D Artifacts

Gardiner, Eileen, and Ronald G. Musto. “The Elements of Digital Humanities: Object, Artifact, Image, Sound, Space.” Chapter. In The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars, 43–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139003865.005.

In chapter four of Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars artifacts are can be treated as a reoccurring motif as many of the tools discussed in this chapter refers to them and how they can transcend what was previously a limitation. Time and space are consistently brought up throughout this chapter, and artifacts were previously limited by being bound to a particular place which add to the sometimes-great difficulty in order to see or study them. However, simple photos can capture the essence of an artifact for all to see provided they have a connection to do so. This makes studying more 2D objects easier, such as pages of a manuscript, but this method is not all encompassing. 3D modelling and photogrammetry now eliminates the 2D representation’s limitations by adding depth, and creating a highly accurate model in both size, and detail which revolutionizes access to artifacts for study. This has the potential to not only engage the academic audience but create a new avenue to engage the public as well. As seen on Florida’s Division of Historical Resources website, they have already embraced photogrammetry within the scope of a project set on a Spanish galleon found here: http://floridahistoryin3d.com/. This project embraced this digital tool as a way of education with the 3D representation of a physical artifact as the center piece complete with a description of the artifact, points on interest on the model, and references that can all be seen here: http://floridahistoryin3d.com/viewer.html?id=a748863f3a2a4341aca6ff438f3c88cb.

                As mentioned in chapter four, 3D models have more purposes than just the model itself; 3D printing creates a plastic replica of the object that can painted to replicate the original product. This has multiple uses such as museum displays, or physical points of study, and as points for education by allowing these cheap replicas to be in more locations without needing to take special care for its stewardship.

                This concept got me to think about my thesis concept in a way to bring history through artifacts out of the collections and onto the internet in a free and educational way much like the Florida’s Division of Historical Resources 3D project. Additionally, I know of 3D modelling being used to recreate landscapes in the same way small objects are recreated in the digital space, which makes me excited at looking into using a 3D modern landscape with touch points that lead out to 3D artifacts and their description in order to immerse the viewer in what could be a remote underwater landscape, and connect the provenience and context of the site to the viewer.

                A Few questions discussed in chapter four centers around authenticity, and in the face of 3D models and replicas made from 3D prints it brings into question of not only what is authentic but its importance as well. In light of an increasingly digital age, this becomes an important question to discuss. As mentioned in the book, the authentic item is tied to time and space and holds special importance over replicas. A Macedonian jewelry set was shaped by human hands for Macedonian royalty and has survived to this day which makes such an object important as it is a direct link to classical Macedon. While this is true, I believe any fears over the original losing importance in light of recreations to be absurd. The original jewelry set, for example, will always have its priceless importance, however it will always be limited to its location. Therefore, with more widespread usage of 3D models and replicas, this jewelry set can now engage a world-wide audience even though they aren’t authentic. Additionally, as the Notre Dame Cathedral burned earlier this year, and Brazil’s National Museum’s destruction the year before, it is known all to well that our stewardship of the past can fail and the direct link to the past can be forever lost. However, with 3D representation the authentic artifacts will be lost but their history and physical representation through replication will not.

Trevor Colaneri

University of Central Florida

Orlando, Florida