This week we were introduced to the realm of spacial humanities. A realm that has seen large shifts in the last decade or so with the adoption of Geospatial Information System (GIS). GIS is a powerful tool that facilitates the creation of robust, data filled maps. In the Digital Humanities maps are often used to construct arguments surrounding historical events by reconstructing the historical landscape. A feat beginning with digitizing historical maps and aligning it with the ‘correct map’ of today through a process called georeferencing.
On Tuesday we worked with the David Rumsey Collection of historical maps and georeferenced one of the maps. There are so many different types of maps in this collection. Just browsing through a couple I saw a wide variety of ways to represent space. The map I ended up working on was historical map of Italy, it aligned quite nicely with the current map. You can view my rectified map here. Something I noticed while working on this map was that although it was fairly consistent with the modern map the proportions were sometimes off. This was especially the case when I looked at the countries included on the map that surrounded Italy. The Tunisian coast for example did not match when the rest of Italy was nicely aligned in the current map. This disparity highlights the original purpose of the historical map alongside many of the likely biases that those creating the map possessed.
Process
I found the process of georectifying this map almost meditative. It required a high level of focus and analysis that captured my attention. I also found learning how to do it easy enough to get a hang of and accessible. Prior to doing this exercise we explored several different digital humanities mapping projects. These types of projects are some of my favorite kinds of digital humanities projects that we have looked at so far, I find them fascinating and a really interesting way to portray and argument. Practicing georeferencing myself illustrated both the possibilities and limitations of digital mapping projects. With a georectified map you have the ability to input it into GIS and combine additional layers of data to formulate arguments. For example my map of Italy was created in 1816, if I could find population data for this time I could create a map that compared where people lived in Italy in 1816 and now.
Problems
This tool is highly robust and presents a lot of cool ways to investigate questions, however, there are some limitations. For instance, when the historical map you are using does not represent space in the same way as the traditional, Western mapping system it is really difficult to accurately align the two. This can limit the types of maps that we are rectifying thus skewing the places and people that are being represented in this way. Furthermore, this method is most applicable when dealing with geographic space. When asking questions outside of this realm it becomes more difficult and less effective.
