A GIS in Ancient Cartography (original) (raw)
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ABSTRACT The goal of the European INTERREG IIIB project “Roman Routes in the Mediterranean”, coordinated by the Cultural Heritage Safeguard Office of the Aosta Valley (North-West Italy), is to analyse the transformations that have occurred in the Ayas Valley (AO) between the Roman times and middle ages. Six research groups, from different disciplines, have taken part in this project: classical archaeologists, medieval archaeologists, historians and geologists.
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Geolocating and Georeferencing: GIS Tools for Ancient Maps Visualisation
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The e-Library on Ancient Spanish Cartography has been created inside the frame set by the European Union about the Europe's digital cultural heritage to give a response to the real demand among citizens and within the research community. With this aim we have applied the most advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) to make ancient Spanish maps and views accessible through Internet. On a first stage we have built a relational multiformat and multilingual database that included high resolution images of the cartographic documents and that supported the online accessibility structured by levels. This platform has been recently improved by implementing an open GIS based on the data sets of the e-Library. GIS tools have enlarged the usability of the system as the traditional geolocation searches are now completed with the queries based on maps' georeferencing. The GIS on Ancient Spanish Maps suggests a new concept in digital map libraries.
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This paper traces the history of the International Map of the World (IMW), starting from the first attempts made by humans to represent the world in which they lived, including the difficulties faced in representing the spherical earth (Anaximander), until the well-known Tabula Peutingeriana, a map which documents the oikoumene. In 1928 Crawford highlighted the importance of a European historical map, choosing the International Map of the World (IMW) as the cartographic base for the Tabula Imperii Romani, subdividing this into sheets at a scale of 1:1,000,000. In more recent times, the TIR has tackled the transition from a printed to a digital format and the last part of this paper deals with the complex mechanism of transposing the data from printed maps to the most modern GIS and WebGIS systems. This issue reveals numerous critical topics, including accurate positioning and the problem of varying scale ratios.
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During the last five years the LIAAM (Laboratory of Computer Science Applied to Medieval Archaeology) of the Siena University has worked heavily on developing and testing a wide range of digital cartography related to archaeological data. In this paper we will discuss our approach to the management of a complex cartographical data set, focusing particularly on what kind of data archaeologists need and on how to relate these maps to possible research applications and management alternatives. Another important point is represented by the requirement of data exchange with local and regional administrations ; this process has to be bi-directional (archaeologists acquire basic maps and return maps of archaeological risk) in order to really let our discipline be part of landscape administration processes. The GIS platform of the Archaeological Map of the Siena Province represents a valid model for both of the main points explained above; it has produced good results in fact of historical knowledge improvement.
In the last 22 years, the attempts of the central institutions to create, use and update a national database with all the archaeological sites of Roman Dacia have failed. In this paper, we will use digital data, former maps from the 19 th century, archaeological information, and aerial vertical photographs, to reconstruct several elements of the landscape of the Roman Dacia. In lack of a national archaeological repertory and topographic researches using aerial photography, the reconstruction of the Dacian landscape is still today a difficult task to achieve. Our purpose is to discover, explain and map the spatial patterns using archaeological data, digital cartography and GIS.
Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies, and Scholarship
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Technologies, Methodologies and Scholarship Historical GIS is an emerging field that uses Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to research the geographies of the past. Ian Gregory and Paul Ell present the first study to comprehensively define this emerging field, exploring all aspects of using GIS in historical research. A GIS is a form of database in which every item of data is linked to a spatial location. This technology offers unparalleled opportunities to add insight and rejuvenate historical research through the ability to identify and use the geographical characteristics of data. Historical GIS introduces the basic concepts and tools underpinning GIS technology, describing and critically assessing the visualisation, analytical and e-Science methodologies that it enables, and examining key scholarship where GIS has been used to enhance research debates. The result is a clear agenda charting how GIS will develop as one of the most important approaches to scholarship in historical geography.
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The preliminary remark to the research described in the paper is the utilization of GIS for the management and the analysis of geographical-territorial data in their historic-temporal evolution, or rather to arrange historical information according to a key of spatial reading. In the development of a territory the historical cartography has had a deciding role. This means the necessity of getting data and informations from maps not only temporally arranged but even spatially referenced. The historical maps, however, for their metrical and semantic characteristics, are rather difficult to reference with the commonly used procedure. Often times in fact, they contain topographical and not metrical information and their insertion into a GIS is actually impossible. The aim of the research is to recover the metrical content in historical maps (particularly portolan charts, Isolari, perspective views of towns of XV-XVI century) using analyses which lead to a definition of a methodology for...