Reading text with GIS: Different digital lenses for Ancient World Geography
Stuart Dunn (King’s College London)
Digital Classicist London & Institute of Classical Studies seminar 2016
Friday June 24th at 16:30, in room 234, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Texts and geography have always gone together, with recent focus on semantic annotation and extraction of place names from texts. This presentation will reflect on how conventional GIS techniques can sit alongside close reading. Using an example from the Heritage Gazetteer of Cyprus, we will reflect on how GIS methods can be used to interrogate a modern text which describes ancient places. A section of the itinerary in George Jeffery’s Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus (1918) will be “remediated” using landscape analysis functions available in QuantumGIS. We will conclude with some general reflections on the use of GIS methods with textual and other qualitative material.
Recommended readings:
T. Sutton, O. Dassau, M. Sutton (2009), A Gentle Introduction to GIS
Sébastien Caquard (2011), Cartography I: Mapping narrative cartography
Livecast at Digital Classicist London YouTube channel.
ALL WELCOME