Historical GIS: New Ways of Doing History

If GIS represent a new way of doing history and allow historians to do spatial histories, historical analyses that link historical data to specific geographical locations and focus on spatial relationships with geography in a revolutionary way, then the systems' impact is not limited to histori...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Historical Methods 2008-09, Vol.41 (4), p.191-196
Main Author: Schlichting, Kurt
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Geographic information systems
Geography
Historical analysis
Nonfiction
Software
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Summary:If GIS represent a new way of doing history and allow historians to do spatial histories, historical analyses that link historical data to specific geographical locations and focus on spatial relationships with geography in a revolutionary way, then the systems' impact is not limited to historical research. Geographical Information Systems Readers of Placing History may be attracted to the text because they are interested in the substantive applications of GIS and mapping to specific historical periods, such as ancient Rome or the American Civil War. Spatial data can also be linked to boundary files, such as counties, as Geoff Cunfer does in his chapter, "Scaling the Dust Bowl" (Knowles 2008, chap. 4) and as Ian Gregory does for counties in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century in "'A Map is Just a Bad Graph': Why Spatial Statistics Are Important in Historical GIS" (ibid., chap. 5).\n A number of the authors hint at the effort needed to use GIS for historical research.
ISSN:0161-5440
1940-1906
DOI:10.3200/HTMS.41.4.191-196