From 9bc5d57911030fb7c36de0a429978b3b70afff3b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Yann Ryan <45659603+yann-ryan@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:18:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Update space-place-gazetteers.md --- en/drafts/originals/space-place-gazetteers.md | 101 ++++++++---------- 1 file changed, 45 insertions(+), 56 deletions(-) diff --git a/en/drafts/originals/space-place-gazetteers.md b/en/drafts/originals/space-place-gazetteers.md index 1a2f08ff6..041d6a962 100644 --- a/en/drafts/originals/space-place-gazetteers.md +++ b/en/drafts/originals/space-place-gazetteers.md @@ -25,17 +25,17 @@ doi: XX.XXXXX/phen0000 ## Lesson Overview -This lesson introduces you to gazetteers, which are spatial knowledge organization systems about places that record names, spatial footprints, and other characteristics that have historically been associated with any locale. The lesson will explain how to think about the concept of place, why gazetteers are useful for spatial history, how to use historical information to create a gazetteer, and how to enhance and share a gazetteer. +This lesson introduces you to digital gazetteers, which are spatial knowledge organization systems about places that record names, spatial footprints, and other characteristics that have historically been associated with any locale. The lesson will explain how to think about the concept of place, why gazetteers are useful for spatial history, how to use historical information to create a gazetteer, and how to enhance and share a gazetteer. -A well-structured gazetteer reflects the fact that places are conceptual entities, not simply names or points on maps. Any given place may have had multiple names in numerous languages over the course of history, potentially involving conflicts about who has the power to enforce any of those names. The spatial extents, names, and feature types (settlements, buildings, nations, mountains, and so on) of places frequently change over time. Gazetteers are essential resources for spatial history. Unlike maps, gazetteers can readily connect named spatial entities with one another and with modern locations, and gazetteers make it easy to annotate any identified place with information about any texts, events, people, or other places that have been associated with it. +A well-structured gazetteer reflects the fact that places are conceptual entities, not simply names or points on maps. Any given place may have had multiple names in numerous languages over the course of history, potentially involving conflicts about who has the power to enforce any of those names. The spatial extents, names, and feature types (settlements, buildings, nations, mountains, and so on) of places frequently change over time. This lesson focuses on digital gazetteers, which are essential resources for spatial history. Unlike maps, gazetteers can readily connect named spatial entities with one another and with modern locations, and gazetteers make it easy to annotate any identified place with information about any texts, events, people, or other places that have been associated with it. The term gazetteer also refers to certain printed historical documents such as geographical indexes, directories, and encyclopdias. [^1] This lesson is focused on their digital equivalents. ### Learning Outcomes -This lesson will demonstrate how to build gazetteers, starting with simple spreadsheets and then building them into linked open data resources to share with other projects. +This lesson will demonstrate how to build digital gazetteers, starting with simple spreadsheets and then building them into linked open data resources to share with other projects. At the end of this lesson, you will be able to: -- Define what a gazetteer is, understand the concept of place, and distinguish gazetteers from other forms of spatial information. +- Define what a gazetteer is, understand the concept of place, and distinguish gazetteers from other forms of spatial information. - Identify scenarios for which creating a gazetteer may be preferable to using a geographic information system. - Transform a historical text into a gazetteer. - Share a gazetteer with other platforms to enhance it and use it for analytical purposes. @@ -46,15 +46,15 @@ No coding experience is needed to complete this lesson. You should be comfortab ## Historical Example -This lesson will show you how to create a gazetteer based on the online [Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela](https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/tudela.html), an English translation of a Hebrew-language itinerary composed by Benjamin of Tudela (1130-1173), a Jewish traveler who journeyed between the Iberian Peninsula and West Asia in the twelfth century. Benjamin transited through three hundred cities along his route, recording information about geography, ethnography, commerce, Jewish life, and Jewish-Muslim relations.[^1] This text is a major work of medieval geography and Jewish history. You will build a gazetteer of places that Benjamin visited. This example will teach you to extract place names from written historical texts and use them to build a succinct gazetteer. The waypoints along Benjamin’s journey are cities with synagogues, so the lesson will explain how to build a gazetteer that includes historic place names as well as other feature types that are important in the historical record. This fulfills two lesson components: first, why and how a scholar might choose to build a basic gazetteer, and second, how a gazetteer can support historical analysis. +This lesson will show you how to create a gazetteer based on the online [Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela](https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/tudela.html), an English translation of a Hebrew-language itinerary composed by Benjamin of Tudela (1130-1173), a Jewish traveler who journeyed between the Iberian Peninsula and West Asia in the twelfth century. Benjamin transited through three hundred cities along his route, recording information about geography, ethnography, commerce, Jewish life, and Jewish-Muslim relations.[^2] This text is a major work of medieval geography and Jewish history. You will build a gazetteer of places that Benjamin visited. This example will teach you to extract place names from written historical texts and use them to build a succinct gazetteer. The waypoints along Benjamin’s journey are cities with synagogues, so the lesson will explain how to build a gazetteer that includes historic place names as well as other feature types that are important in the historical record. This fulfills two lesson components: first, why and how a scholar might choose to build a basic gazetteer, and second, how a gazetteer can support historical analysis. ## Background: Space, Place, Gazetteers, and Knowledge Organization Systems ### What is a Place? -What is a place? You might think that a place is simply a geographic location, but it is more helpful to think of a place as a concept. The geographer John Agnew has postulated that when we say something is a place, we are talking about three different ideas. First, any place has a specific *location*. It lies somewhere on the surface of the earth. Second, the place is a setting for social relations. A place is a *locale* that shapes values, attitudes, or behaviors. Any workplace, school, or prison is a locale. Finally, any given place evokes a unique *sense of place* for each of its denizens, evoking specific impressions and sensations of belonging or unbelonging. That is to say, a place is a location where memorable events have transpired.[^2] Cultural geographers tend to distinguish the concept of place, with its references to unique and distinctive settings for human activity, from that of space, which refers to the totality of all possible geographical expanses, many of which may exist regardless of whether they are sites of human meaning. +What is a place? You might think that a place is simply a geographic location, but it is more helpful to think of a place as a concept. The geographer John Agnew has postulated that when we say something is a place, we are talking about three different ideas. First, any place has a specific *location*. It lies somewhere on the surface of the earth. Second, the place is a setting for social relations. A place is a *locale* that shapes values, attitudes, or behaviors. Any workplace, school, or prison is a locale. Finally, any given place evokes a unique *sense of place* for each of its denizens, evoking specific impressions and sensations of belonging or unbelonging. That is to say, a place is a location where memorable events have transpired.[^3] Cultural geographers like Yi-fu Tuan tend to distinguish the concept of place, with its references to unique and distinctive settings for human activity, from that of space, which refers to the totality of all possible geographical expanses, many of which may exist regardless of whether they are sites of human meaning.[^4] -Many theorists of place describe the concept in historical and temporally dynamic terms. The Marxist feminist geographer Doreen Massey defines places as sites of "meeting up of history in space," where people with different relations to authority and security encounter one another.[^3] The anthropologist Tim Ingold emphasizes the fact that "places do not just have locations but histories," because they are networks of habitation where people’s pathways become entangled.[^4] The Black activist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore underscores the fact that struggles for social justice are always spatial, and thus they are always about processes of placemaking.[^5] For these scholars, place can never be distinguished from travel, activity, relations of power, and human interaction. With its focus on human activity, meaning, contestation, and change over time, place - the purview of names, lists, descriptions, and gazetteers - is often a more meaningful concept for spatial historians than space – the domain of maps, which cannot easily represent human interaction and meaning. Place is an essential concept for many types of historical analysis and data management. +Many theorists of place describe the concept in historical and temporally dynamic terms. The Marxist feminist geographer Doreen Massey defines places as sites of "meeting up of history in space," where people with different relations to authority and security encounter one another.[^5] The anthropologist Tim Ingold emphasizes the fact that "places do not just have locations but histories," because they are networks of habitation where peoples' pathways become entangled.[^6] The Black activist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore underscores the fact that struggles for social justice are always spatial, and thus they are always about processes of placemaking.[^7] For these scholars, place can never be distinguished from travel, activity, relations of power, and human interaction. With its focus on human activity, meaning, contestation, and change over time, place - the purview of names, lists, descriptions, and gazetteers - is often a more meaningful concept for spatial historians than space – the domain of maps, which cannot easily represent human interaction and meaning. Place is an essential concept for many types of historical analysis and data management. The set of values, institutions, and relationships associated with any given locale are multitudinous, dynamic and unstable. A place may change substantially in all its particulars even as it persists as a spatial entity. Names for places may coexist, or they may succeed each other after regime changes or major events. Constantinople (also known historically as Lygos, Byzantium, Nova Roma, Rūmiyyat al-Kubra, and other monikers) also took on the name Istanbul after the Ottoman conquest in the fifteenth century, though both names were used officially until 1928. When Dutch settlers colonized the "hilly island" at the mouth of the Hudson River that Lenape residents called Manahatta, they named their settlement Neuwe Amsterdam, which became New York in 1664 after the English took over the Dutch colony. Informally, people might also refer to the city by the 1807 term Gotham or the 1921 term Big Apple. If they are speaking or writing in Chinese, they would call it Niuyue (纽约). @@ -62,11 +62,14 @@ Conversely, places may retain stable names even as their spatial footprints chan ### Gazetteer or GIS? -The first task for anybody embarking on a digital spatial history project is to decide whether to begin with a dataset-based gazetteer, or a map-based geographic information system. A project emphasizing the conflicting, contested, and dynamic characteristics of places, as well as spatial information reflected in textual attestations, should begin with a gazetteer. A GIS is only the logical starting point for a spatial history project centered on geography and spatial relations *per se*. +The first task for anybody embarking on a digital spatial history project is to decide whether to begin with a dataset-based gazetteer, or a map-based geographic information system. A project emphasizing the conflicting, contested, and dynamic characteristics of places, as well as spatial information reflected in textual attestations, should begin with a gazetteer. An example of this would be the [*Heritage Gazetteer of Libya*](https://slsgazetteer.org/). This project aims to provide as information about unique identifiers, locations, and monuments within modern Libya that were important to its history before 1950. The emphasis of the project in on compiling names and variants produced by the research of the Society for Libyan Studies. +A GIS is only the logical starting point for a spatial history project centered on geography and spatial relations *per se*. Both gazetteers and GIS are based on spatial data structured in particular formats. The focus of GIS is primarily on the projection of geospatial geometries in the form of points, lines, and polygons. An example GIS project would be the [*Bomb Site: Mapping the WW2 bomb census*](http://bombsight.org/#17/51.50595/-0.10680) project, which aims to emphasize first and foremost the visualization of the targets of the Luftwaffe Blitz bombing raids in London from October 7, 1940 to June 6, 1941. While a gazetteer may also contain geographical information, its primary focus is on depicting other kinds of information about places and not merely points, lines, or polygons on a map base. Indeed, although geometry is necessary for making maps, the symbols on maps only tell a small part of the story of a place. The way to model rich and multivocal data about place making events, contestation and power, places as settings for social events, and to represent the sense of place, is with a gazetteer, not a map. Gazetteers are excellent for collecting information such as what a place has been called, by whom, why, and when; who has been there; what has occurred there; who has contended for authority over it; or what texts have referred to it. These are all questions that are of special interest to historians. Not every spatial project requires a map. In many cases, a gazetteer is a more useful way of capturing and analyzing historical spatial information. -In its simplest form, a gazetteer is an index or dictionary of place names. Gazetteers do not need to include geographic coordinates, though many do so to enable visualization of spatial data. Gazetteers often include a controlled vocabulary of information about feature types that describe places as well: whether a place is a settlement, a waypoint on a travel itinerary, or a geographical feature such as a mountain or river. A gazetteer, especially a historical one, is a kind of knowledge organization system (KOS). A KOS is a tool "that brings together related concepts and their names in a meaningful way, such that users of the KOS can easily comprehend the relationships represented."[^6] Historical gazetteers link discourses about a place or places over time. The shape and organization of the KOS is determined by the shared characteristics of the places that need to be modeled. +In its simplest form, a gazetteer is an index or dictionary of place names. Gazetteers do not need to include geographic coordinates, though many do so to enable visualization of spatial data. Gazetteers, thus, are not merely limited to the historical realm. They can be used to track the movements of a character or characters throughout a fictional realm, for example tracing Frodo's travels from The Shire to Mordor. + +Gazetteers often include a controlled vocabulary of information about feature types that describe places as well: whether a place is a settlement, a waypoint on a travel itinerary, or a geographical feature such as a mountain or river. A gazetteer, especially a historical one, is a kind of knowledge organization system (KOS). A KOS is a tool "that brings together related concepts and their names in a meaningful way, such that users of the KOS can easily comprehend the relationships represented."[^8] Historical gazetteers link discourses about a place or places over time. The shape and organization of the KOS is determined by the shared characteristics of the places that need to be modeled. ### Considerations @@ -74,27 +77,28 @@ Based on the above discussion, it should be clear that the most important consid The author of a historical gazetteer that includes information about New York, the great metropolis situated at the mouth of the Hudson River, would do well to group information about its many names into one complex entity associated with a single ID number: Lenape Manahatta, Dutch Neuwe Amsterdam, British colonial New York, and Washington Irving’s 1807 coinage of Gotham. Grouping multiple names and attestations into a single gazetteer record allows for several affordances. First, it makes the gazetteer into a powerful thesaurus. Second, it makes it possible to map as much information as possible onto a single geographical referent. Third, it makes the gazetteer into a compelling and potentially decolonial work of history which, by collecting names and attestations together, tells a story of sovereignty, colonialism, and culture. Finally, it improves search and discovery, especially in the context of linked open data. -To be sure, it is a matter of personal and scholarly judgement and of research strategy to decide whether these names do indeed refer to a single place. After all, Manahatta was the name of an island, not an inhabited place, and that island today is the site of only one of the five boroughs of New York City. There is no objective way to decide whether to group these names together as references to a single place. In an ambiguous case like this, the consideration is simply whether one’s own research and visualization tasks would be enhanced more effectively by grouping these names together, or by leaving some of them separate and potentially specified as "relations" using the [GeoJSON-LD Linked Places format](https://github.com/LinkedPasts/linked-places-format) or another similar data format. Names and attestations that are grouped into a single entity are easiest to find and use together, but the decision to group disparate pieces of information together may come at the expense of precision, accuracy and nuance. Beyond human judgement, these questions are the domain of entity resolution, an open and unresolved topic in information science, natural language processing, and geoscience.[^7] - -### Data Standards: Linked Places GeoJSON and LP-TSV - -In a widely cited 2006 book, the geospatial librarian Linda Hill suggested that each entry in a well-structured gazetteer should include at least one name, at least one set of coordinates, and one or more feature types.[^8] For historians, it is often especially important to include modern place names if the name has changed, as well as a temporal range for when the older name was attested in a source. For those operating with multilingual sources or projects, it may also be important to note different names or transliterations for a given place, for example, Moscow (EN), Moskau (DE), Moscou (FR), Москва (RU). - -The [Linked Places GeoJSON Format](https://whgazetteer.org/tutorials/choosing/) is an interconnection standard for contributions of historical place data to linked open data projects. It permits temporal scoping of entire place records and temporal scoping of individual name variants, geometries, place types, and place relations, expressed either as timespans or as named time periods. It supports any number of names, geometries, and relations, as well as information about the sources of such assertions. LP-TSV is a delimited file format derived from Linked Places. It is intended for gazetteer developers whose data is relatively simple. For example, an LP-TSV row can include a timespan for an entire record, but does not permit temporal scoping of individual components of the record. LP and LP-TSV are widely used historical gazetteer data standards. The next section provides a hands-on example of how to model and build an LP-TSV compatible gazetteer from a historical text. +To be sure, it is a matter of personal and scholarly judgement and of research strategy to decide whether these names do indeed refer to a single place. After all, Manahatta was the name of an island, not an inhabited place, and that island today is the site of only one of the five boroughs of New York City. There is no objective way to decide whether to group these names together as references to a single place. In an ambiguous case like this, the consideration is simply whether one’s own research and visualization tasks would be enhanced more effectively by grouping these names together, or by leaving some of them separate and potentially specified as "relations" using the [GeoJSON-LD Linked Places format](https://github.com/LinkedPasts/linked-places-format) or another similar data format. Names and attestations that are grouped into a single entity are easiest to find and use together, but the decision to group disparate pieces of information together may come at the expense of precision, accuracy and nuance. A given gazetteer author or project team may choose to articulate disambiguation principles in order to assist with interoperability and reusability. Beyond human judgement, these questions are the domain of entity resolution, an open and unresolved topic in information science, natural language processing, and geoscience.[^9] Spatial historians, as well as information scientists interested in questions of temporality, have also begun to publish on this topic. [^10] ## Building a Gazetteer from a Historical Text Historians often work with detailed written texts such as memoirs or travelogues that may contain a wealth of spatial information. *The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela* is one such example of rich, descriptive historical text that can be mined for data for spatial research. -Benjamin of Tudela was a twelfth century Spanish Jewish traveler whose text describes his expedition and his interactions with different Jewish communities. A spatial historian interested in this text may want to discover where Benjamin of Tudela travelled on his grand journey, and how he interacted with Jewish communities in the locations he visited. These questions suggest the outline for a gazetteer spreadsheet. The authors of this tutorial recommend using either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for the process of creating a simple gazetteer that is compatible with the LP-TSV format. +Benjamin of Tudela was a twelfth century Spanish Jewish traveler whose text describes his expedition and his interactions with different Jewish communities. A spatial historian interested in this text may want to discover where Benjamin of Tudela traveled on his grand journey, and how he interacted with Jewish communities in the locations he visited. A scholar might also use this source as one of a large corpus of texts to examine questions about travel in the post-classical period, European exploration, or Eurasian Jewish studies. The places named in this itinerary could be cross-referenced with those named in other accounts from a similar period to see if there were certain stops that were more popular than others or to see if different travelers described the locations in the same ways. + +The structure of Tudela's travelogue suggests the outline for a gazetteer spreadsheet. The authors of this tutorial recommend using either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for the process of creating a simple gazetteer that is compatible with the LP-TSV format. To begin, navigate to the section entitled "The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela" on the [web version of this text](https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/tudela.html#itinerary_1). ### Building Spreadsheet Fields -Our first task is to create the fields in a spreadsheet that we will populate with data from the historical text. Open Excel or whichever program is your preferred spreadsheet software. From the first paragraph of *The Itinerary*, we know that we need a column of place names that are travel stops. Start by creating a column called, "TravelStop." In keeping with good practices for making spreadsheets that may need to be shared or exported into other software, we will also include an ID number column. Insert a new column before the "TravelStop" one and fill in, "ID" for this column header. The next section of this tutorial, on Linked Open Data, will explain why it is also a gazetteer best practice to include a place type to describe the travel stops. For now, we will assume that all travel stops are some kind of inhabited place. +Our first task is to create the fields in a spreadsheet that we will populate with data from the historical text. Open Excel or whichever program is your preferred spreadsheet software. + +In a widely cited 2006 book, the geospatial librarian Linda Hill suggested that each entry in a well-structured gazetteer should include at least one name, at least one set of coordinates, and one or more feature types.[^11] For historians, it is often especially important to include modern place names if the name has changed, as well as a temporal range for when the older name was attested in a source. For those operating with multilingual sources or projects, it may also be important to note different names or transliterations for a given place, for example, Moscow (EN), Moskau (DE), Moscou (FR), Москва (RU). + +From the first paragraph of *The Itinerary*, we know that we need a column of place names that are travel stops. Start by creating a column called, "TravelStop." In keeping with good practices for making spreadsheets that may need to be shared or exported into other software, we will also include an ID number column. Insert a new column before the "TravelStop" one and fill in, "ID" for this column header. The next section of this tutorial, on Linked Open Data, will explain why it is also a gazetteer best practice to include a place type to describe the travel stops. For now, we will assume that all travel stops are some kind of inhabited place. + +You can use whatever column headers you want for your own research, but we are using ones based on the [Linked Places format](https://github.com/LinkedPasts/linked-places-format/blob/main/tsv_0.4.md) for the ease of future data interoperability. The [Linked Places GeoJSON Format](https://whgazetteer.org/tutorials/choosing/) is an interconnection standard for contributions of historical place data to linked open data projects. It permits temporal scoping of entire place records and temporal scoping of individual name variants, geometries, place types, and place relations, expressed either as timespans or as named time periods. It supports any number of names, geometries, and relations, as well as information about the sources of such assertions. LP-TSV is a delimited file format derived from Linked Places. It is intended for gazetteer developers whose data is relatively simple. For example, an LP-TSV row can include a timespan for an entire record, but does not permit temporal scoping of individual components of the record. LP and LP-TSV are widely used historical gazetteer data standards. Using a standard from the start might be cumbersome at first, but it will save you lots of time later if you wish to share this project in a variety of ways. -You can use whatever column headers you want for your own research, but we are using ones based on the [Linked Places format](https://github.com/LinkedPasts/linked-places-format/blob/main/tsv_0.4.md) for the ease of future data interoperability. Using a standard from the start might be cumbersome at first, but it will save you lots of time later if you wish to share this project in a variety of ways. Based on our source material, including a controlled vocabulary for the type of place is smart for the dataset. The Linked Places format recommends the use of a Place Type. Include a column called "PlaceType." Using an established standard like this means that the data we create in this tutorial, or that you create for your own research informed by this tutorial, can be shared with other likeminded researchers to create new knowledge. We will thus also include a column for aat_type, another strongly recommended standardized form of attribute data that makes it easier to share historical spatial project data. Type in "aat_type" for one of the columns. @@ -104,16 +108,12 @@ Please add two other columns as well. We need a column that accounts for where w For now, your spreadsheet should look something like this table below. -
- | ID | TravelStop | Source | AttestedDate | PlaceType | aat_type | JewishPop | | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -
-
As a note, we are formatting our column headers in this way for future ease of data interoperability. If we were to export our data to mapping software like QGIS or ArcGIS, we need the ID column. Mapping software also does not like long column headers. ArcGIS, for example, can crash if a column header includes any spaces or is longer than 15 characters. Try to think of the shortest way of naming columns that make sense to you and potential future collaborators. Other important notes for spreadsheets and data interoperability include not using commas anywhere. Many programs that could use the spreadsheet for future analysis require that the spreadsheet be uploaded in .CSV or comma separated value format. This means that anytime the software sees a comma, it reads it as the boundary of a cell or row in the spreadsheet. Inserting commas will break the software and make the sheet unreadable. If you need a way to parse information, use a semi-colon. Also avoid most special characters if you can. They can also break the software. If you need to put a space in a column header, use an underscore.
@@ -126,15 +126,15 @@ For now, your spreadsheet should look something like this table below. Now we are going to start filling in our spreadsheet with the information from the first paragraph of Tudela's travelogue. By building this out for the first paragraph, we can see if our model works well or needs to be changed in any way. It’s better to test with a smaller sample of data and tweak earlier rather than later. -To start, we will need to fill in the correspodning data for our different column headers that we have created. First, go through the first pargraph of text and put each name of a stop in the "TravelStop" column. +To start, we will need to fill in the corresponding data for our different column headers that we have created. First, go through the first paragraph of text and put each name of a stop in the "TravelStop" column. -Next, we need to use our controlled vocabulary to describe the travel stop locations. In the "PlaceType" column, type "inhabited place," which is a good choice because it is a standardized vocabulary term from the [Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus](https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/about.html), a structured resource that aims to improve access to information for art, architecture, and material cultural. It is also extremely useful for history projects as it is a well-established, controlled vocabulary that is used by a variety of different scholars and projects across a multitude of humanistic and social science disciplines. +Next, we need to use our controlled vocabulary to describe the travel stop locations. In the "PlaceType" column, type "inhabited place," which is a good choice because it is a standardized vocabulary term from the [Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus](https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/about.html), a structured resource that aims to improve access to information for art, architecture, and material culture. It is also extremely useful for history projects as it is a well-established, controlled vocabulary that is used by a variety of different scholars and projects across a multitude of humanistic and social science disciplines. Next, we need to fill in the "aat_type" column with the aat code for [inhabited place, 300008347](https://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=300008347&logic=AND¬e=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300008347). Next, we need to describe the Jewish populations of these travel stops. For simplicity’s sake, and for ease of future data sorting, we will write Y or NA ("not applicable" rather than "no," since we don’t want to propagate false information about whether there was definitively a Jewish population based on this account) under the "JewishPop" column. -We now need to describe the source of our data. The the "Source" column, record that your information comes from *The Itinerary*. You can abbreviate the name of the source as you wish and maintain the full citation in a separate data dictionary document. For now, we will write, "ItineraryTudela" to make it easy to understand whose itinerary we are referencing. It is essential for digital spatial history projects like this to rigorously maintain the same standards of citation that would be expected from any other work of historical scholarship. Recording this information in the spreadsheet itself rather than in metadata external to it makes it easy to add records from other sources if you expand your research in the future. +We now need to describe the source of our data. The "Source" column, record that your information comes from *The Itinerary*. You can abbreviate the name of the source as you wish and maintain the full citation in a separate data dictionary document. For now, we will write, "ItineraryTudela" to make it easy to understand whose itinerary we are referencing. It is essential for digital spatial history projects like this to rigorously maintain the same standards of citation that would be expected from any other work of historical scholarship. Recording this information in the spreadsheet itself rather than in metadata external to it makes it easy to add records from other sources if you expand your research in the future. As this is a project related to historic naming conventions, we need to then account for time in our "AttestedDate" column. Add to this column information about the year for which you deem the information you are recorded to be correct. Benjamin set out on his journey around 1165. It is not clear exactly when he composed *The Itinerary*, though we know that he died in 1173, and *The Itinerary* does not record the specific dates when Benjamin sojourned in each place he visited. We recommend that you choose an arbitrary date of 1170, with a note in your data dictionary and your metadata indicating that this is an estimate. @@ -148,8 +148,6 @@ Finally, put a sequential number for each of the entries in the "ID" column, sta If you follow the model we outlined, your spreadsheet should look something like the table below. -
- | ID | TravelStop | Source | AttestedDate | PlaceType | aat_type | JewishPop | | -- | ---------- | --------------- | ------------ | --------------- | --------- | --------- | | 1 | Tudela | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | NA | @@ -163,16 +161,12 @@ If you follow the model we outlined, your spreadsheet should look something like | 9 | Har Gaash | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | Y | | 10 | Lunel | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | Y | -
- We can see quickly that Benjamin has described a wide variety of different types of information related to the Jewish community in three different settlements. An additional benefit of a gazetteer project is that it is highly iterative. An initial research question or two about the source led to its initial structure. Recording simple amounts of initial data can serve to generate follow-up research questions. In this case, a researcher might now want to know much more than just which settlements had some sort of Jewish population. There could be questions about the size of the populations in various settlements. In the case of Narbonne, Benjamin gives a figure of 300 Jews. In the cases of Barcelona and Gerona, no population statistics are given, but he describes either a "holy" or "small" congregation, which gives clues to the size of the Jewish population in the community. A researcher could then ask questions about which cities had Jewish populations, then which cities had large populations versus small populations. Additionally, researchers could see whether certain cities are centers of Jewish education, and so forth. The gazetteer has already generated a wealth of important information and subsequent questions. A researcher might wish to then create different columns for the different types of information about the Jewish population (i.e., congregation size, educational facilities, number of Rabbis listed, etc.) to make this data easier to filter and analyze later. Thus, we need to augment our spreadsheet. We need to add a column called, "DescJewishPop," in which we can record Benjamin's descriptions of the local population. After creating this column, go back and add the relevant data to the existing spreadsheed. The second paragraph of the travelogue clues us into another important column: name variants. Benjamin mentions a settlement called "Har Gaash," which he notes has an alternative name of "Montpellier." We should record both names as other sources might list one name or the other and this gazetteer can then serve as a means to reconcile these two names around the same physical location. Insert a column after "TravelStop" and call it "AltName" to record any additional names given for a place. Then, continue processing the itinerary through the fourth paragraph for now. That will provide sufficient information for the remaining steps of this lesson. If you do not wish to continue making the spreadsheet, you can download a final version of the information through the first four paragraphs [here](https://github.com/programminghistorian/ph-submissions/blob/gh-pages/assets/space-place-gazetteers/TudelaGazetteer.xlsx). If you have typed in the information yourself thus far, you spreadsheet should look like the below table. -
- |ID|TravelStop|AltName|Source|AttestedDate|PlaceType|aat_type|JewishPop|DescJewishPop| |:----|:----|:----|:----|:----|:----|:----|:----|:----| |1|Tudela| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|NA| | @@ -181,19 +175,16 @@ If you have typed in the information yourself thus far, you spreadsheet should l |4|Tarragona| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|NA| | |5|Barcelona| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|holy congregation; sages; 4 rabbis| |6|Gerona| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|small congregation| -|7|Narbonne| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|learning center; Torah; sages; 4 rabbis; distinguished schoars; 300 Jews| +|7|Narbonne| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|learning center; Torah; sages; 4 rabbis; distinguished scholars; 300 Jews| |8|Beziers| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|congreation; rabbis| |9|Har Gaash|Montpellier|ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|scholars; rabbis; learning centers; Talmud| |10|Lunel| |ItineraryTudela|1170|inhabited place|300008347|Y|congretation; Israelites; learning centers; law; rabbis; Talmud; Sephardi; 300 Jews| -
We could continue to build this gazetteer out for the rest of the text, and we would probably generate more research questions and data points to analyze. Even with what we have processed so far, we have information about Jewish history in the 12th century that is now connected to space and place. Those who compile data such as this might also want to map the data. This then brings one of the greatest challenges of historical-spatial research, taking historic names and mapping them with modern software. Major mapping software providers like Google Maps tend to have major name changes saved in their software, such as Stalingrad/Volgograd or Bombay/Mumbai, but these programs often lack more obscure historic names. With respect to our dataset, Tudela is there because the name has not changed. Google Maps also knows that Saragossa is an alternative spelling for Zaragoza, which is how the name appears on the map. Without Google doing this reconciliation for us, we might not know this to be the same place. Thus, we need to add new columns into our spreadsheet, one for modern names, and ones for latitude and longitude, to make mapping this information easier. Create the following columns, "ModName," "Latitude," and "Longitude." -We also should add a column for the ISO code for the modern country where this location exists. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created a series of two and three letter codes as an internationally recognized standard for referring to countries. It’s generally easiest to use the two letter ISO code. Create a column called, "ISO." We need to use ISO codes for this and many spatial projects because while many of these place names may be unique, Barcelona and Montpellier are not. Using the ISO code allows us to specificy the correct geographic place when multiple places can share a name. Moreover, as this is a travelogue of a journey from Spain to Jerusalem, we know that our traveler will be traversing the lands of what became numerous modern countries. We may wish to ask research questions about that information and it is better to log the information consistently as we go along. The below table illustrates the progression of the spreadsheet. +We also should add a column for the ISO code for the modern country where this location exists. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created a series of two and three letter codes as an internationally recognized standard for referring to countries. It’s generally easiest to use the two letter ISO code. Create a column called, "ISO." We need to use ISO codes for this and many spatial projects because while many of these place names may be unique, Barcelona and Montpellier are not. Using the ISO code allows us to specify the correct geographic place when multiple places can share a name. Moreover, as this is a travelogue of a journey from Spain to Jerusalem, we know that our traveler will be traversing the lands of what became numerous modern countries. We may wish to ask research questions about that information and it is better to log the information consistently as we go along. The below table illustrates the progression of the spreadsheet. -
- | ID | TravelStop | AltName | ModName | Latitude | Longitude | ISO | Source | AttestedDate | PlaceType | aat_type | JewishPop | DescJewishPop | |----|------------|-------------|-------------|----------|-----------|-----|-----------------|--------------|-----------------|-----------|-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 1 | Tudela | | Tudela | | | | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | NA | | @@ -207,22 +198,19 @@ We also should add a column for the ISO code for the modern country where this l | 9 | Har Gaash | Montpellier | Montpellier | | | | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | Y | scholars; rabbis; learning centers; Talmud | | 10 | Lunel | | Lunel | | | | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | Y | congretation; Israelites; learning centers; law; rabbis; Talmud; Sephardi; 300 Jews | -
-Our interest in modern places should not only be limited to the modern countries that our traveler crossed. We might be interested to see if the places named in his journies are the same names used today. Where do we go to get the information about modern names for the places? There are a multitude of options for this work, but the easiest to use is the [World Historical Gazetteer (WHG) website](https://whgazetteer.org), a project which works to reconcile as many historic place names as possible around the globe with modern ones across a multitude of languages and alphabets. Navigate to the website and press the "Explore open access, historical place data" button to be taken to a search window, or [click here to be taken directly to the search interface](https://whgazetteer.org/search/). +Our interest in modern places should not only be limited to the modern countries that our traveler crossed. We might be interested to see if the places named in his journeys are the same names used today. Where do we go to get the information about modern names for the places? There are a multitude of options for this work, but the easiest to use is the [World Historical Gazetteer (WHG) website](https://whgazetteer.org), a project which works to reconcile as many historic place names as possible around the globe with modern ones across a multitude of languages and alphabets. Navigate to the website and press the "Explore open access, historical place data" button to be taken to a search window, or [click here to be taken directly to the search interface](https://whgazetteer.org/search/). With the search interface now activated, let’s start with our first location, Tudela. Type Tudela into the search box and search for it. The WHG then gives us a few result options. We know that Benjamin of Tudela is a Spanish traveler, so the second option of Tudela in ES for Spain is the one we want. We will click on this record to get a new window to open. -{% include figure.html filename="or-en-space-place-gazetteers-01.JPG" alt="Visual description of figure image" caption="Figure 1. World Historical Gazetteer search results for Tudela" %} +{% include figure.html filename="or-en-space-place-gazetteers-07.JPG" alt="Visual description of figure image" caption="Figure 1. World Historical Gazetteer search results for Tudela" %} On the new page for Tudela, we can see that there are no other variants. The city is thus still called Tudela. We can also verify this with a Google Maps search. But the WHG will also give us the geometry for the city as well as the country code for the purposes of filling out our spreadsheet. The main WHG search page gives the country code. On the page for Tudela, there is a green dot on the map showing its location. If we click on that dot, a new popup will appear that gives the latitude and longitude. We can copy and paste those into our spreadsheet. Enter the country code and latitude and longitude coordinates into your spreadsheet. -{% include figure.html filename="or-en-space-place-gazetteers-02.JPG" alt="Visual description of figure image" caption="Figure 2. Tudela record in World Historical Gazetteer" %} +{% include figure.html filename="or-en-space-place-gazetteers-08.JPG" alt="Visual description of figure image" caption="Figure 2. Tudela record in World Historical Gazetteer" %} If we search the next record, Saragossa, we then learn that the modern name is Zaragoza. Again, we can capture the country code and latitude and longitude information from the WHG. If you follow these steps for the rest of the sample cities, your spreadsheet should look as follows. -
- | ID | TravelStop | AltName | ModName | Latitude | Longitude | ISO | Source | AttestedDate | PlaceType | aat_type | JewishPop | DescJewishPop | |----|------------|-------------|-------------|-----------|-----------|-----|-----------------|--------------|-----------------|-----------|-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 1 | Tudela | | Tudela | 42.083333 | -1.6 | ES | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | NA | | @@ -236,8 +224,6 @@ If we search the next record, Saragossa, we then learn that the modern name is Z | 9 | Har Gaash | Montpellier | Montpellier | 43.587 | 3.9073 | FR | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | Y | scholars; rabbis; learning centers; Talmud | | 10 | Lunel | | Lunel | 43.675482 | 4.136189 | FR | ItineraryTudela | 1170 | inhabited place | 300008347 | Y | congretation; Israelites; learning centers; law; rabbis; Talmud; Sephardi; 300 Jews | -
- You can also download the filled-out spreadsheet [here](https://github.com/programminghistorian/ph-submissions/blob/gh-pages/assets/space-place-gazetteers/TudelaGazetteerModernNames.xlsx). Now that we have found the modern equivalents, we can conduct additional research. For example, do these places still exist? Has their identity changed over time? Do Jewish populations in these settlements remain? Have they grown? @@ -255,7 +241,7 @@ Once you have geographic information (e.g. latitude and longitude coordinates), ## Conclusion -Recent scholarship has emphasized that the field of spatial history is not synonymous with the domain of historical GIS.[^9] Indeed, the intellectual history of spatial representation reflects the fact that maps have not often been widely used tools for recording information about the geographical settings for human activity.[^10] Today, when we use navigation apps to find directions to destinations, we are interacting with gazetteers, not reading maps. Despite these insights, education for spatial history tends to focus almost exclusively on GIS training. +Recent scholarship has emphasized that the field of spatial history is not synonymous with the domain of historical GIS.[^12] Indeed, the intellectual history of spatial representation reflects the fact that maps have not often been widely used tools for recording information about the geographical settings for human activity.[^13] Today, when we use navigation apps to find directions to destinations, we are interacting with gazetteers, not reading maps. Despite these insights, education for spatial history tends to focus almost exclusively on GIS training. One purpose of this lesson has been to demonstrate why GIS may not be the best starting point for many spatial history projects, and to explain why you may want to begin with a gazetteer instead. In that spirit, we conclude with a checklist that may assist in determining the strategy that will work best for your project and your research objectives. @@ -275,13 +261,16 @@ In addition to the related *Programming Historian* tutorials listed in Section 5 In addition to using either QGIS or the WHG to map the data produced in this lesson, readers might also be interested in learning how [R can be used for geospatial data and historical research](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/geospatial-data-analysis). ## Endnotes -[^1]: The standard English translation, which is the one used for the link we have included in this lesson is Marcus Nathan Adler, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Critical Text, Translation and Commentary (New York: Phillip Feldheim, Inc., 1907). [A scholarly trilingual (English, Hebrew, Arabic) version of the Itinerary](https://teipublisher.info/exist/apps/TraveLab/Benjamin%20of%20Tudela.xml)) was recently published. The English text on that site is the Adler version. -[^2]: John Agnew, "Space and Place," in John A. Agnew and David N. Livingstone (eds.) *Sage Handbook of Geographical Knowledge* (London: Sage Publications, 2011). -[^3]: Doreen Massey, *For Space* (London: Sage Publications, 2005). -[^4]: Tim Ingold, *Lines: A Brief History* (Routledge, 2016), 105-6. -[^5]: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography" in Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Brenna Bhanda and Alberto Toscano, *Abolition Geography* (Verso, 2022). -[^6]: Ryan Shaw, "Gazetteers Enriched: A Conceptual Basis for Linking Gazetteers with Other Kinds of Information," in *Placing Names: Enriching an Integrating Gazetteers*, ed. Merrick Lex Berman, Ruth Mostern, and Humphrey Southall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 52. -[^7]: Pasquale Balsebre, Gao Cong, Dezhong Yao, Zhen Hai, "Geospatial Entity Resolution," *Proceeedings of the ACM Web Conference 2022* (2022), 3061-71 [https://doi.org/10.1145/3485447.3512026](https://doi.org/10.1145/3485447.3512026) -[^8]: Linda Hill, *Georeferencing: The Geographic Associations of Information* (MIT Press, 2006). -[^9]: For example Ian Gregory and Alistair Geddes, *Toward Spatial Humanities: Historical GIS and Spatial History* (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). -[^10]: Michael Curry, "Toward a Geography of a World Without Maps: Lessons from Ptolemy and Postal Codes," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95.3 (2005), 680-691. [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00481.x](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00481.x) +[^1]: Ruth Mostern and Humphrey Southall, "Gazetteers Past," Merrick Lex Berman, Ruth Mostern, and Humphrey Southall, eds., *Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers* (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 15-25. +[^2]: The standard English translation, which is the one used for the link we have included in this lesson is Marcus Nathan Adler, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Critical Text, Translation and Commentary (New York: Phillip Feldheim, Inc., 1907). [A scholarly trilingual (English, Hebrew, Arabic) version of the Itinerary](https://teipublisher.info/exist/apps/TraveLab/Benjamin%20of%20Tudela.xml)) was recently published. The English text on that site is the Adler version. +[^3]: John Agnew, "Space and Place," in John A. Agnew and David N. Livingstone (eds.) *Sage Handbook of Geographical Knowledge* (London: Sage Publications, 2011). +[^4]: Yi-fu Tuan, *Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience* (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Reprint Edition, 2001). +[^5]: Doreen Massey, *For Space* (London: Sage Publications, 2005). +[^6]: Tim Ingold, *Lines: A Brief History* (Routledge, 2016), 105-6. +[^7]: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography" in Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Brenna Bhanda and Alberto Toscano, *Abolition Geography* (Verso, 2022). +[^8]: Ryan Shaw, "Gazetteers Enriched: A Conceptual Basis for Linking Gazetteers with Other Kinds of Information," in *Placing Names: Enriching an Integrating Gazetteers*, ed. Merrick Lex Berman, Ruth Mostern, and Humphrey Southall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 52. +[^9]: Pasquale Balsebre, Gao Cong, Dezhong Yao, Zhen Hai, "Geospatial Entity Resolution," *Proceeedings of the ACM Web Conference 2022* (2022), 3061-71 [https://doi.org/10.1145/3485447.3512026](https://doi.org/10.1145/3485447.3512026) +[^10]: For example J. T. Hastings, "Automated Conflation of Digital Gazetteer Data," *International Journal of Geographical Information Science* 22.10 (2008), 1109-1127; Vincent Ducatteeuw, "Developing an Urban Gazetteer," *GeoHumanities '21: Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geospatial Humanities* (November 2021), 36-39; and Pawel Garbacz, Bogumil Szady, and Agnieszka Lawrynosicz, "Identity of Historical Localities in Information Systems," *Applied Ontology* 16 (2021), 55-86. +[^11]: Linda Hill, *Georeferencing: The Geographic Associations of Information* (MIT Press, 2006). +[^12]: For example Ian Gregory and Alistair Geddes, *Toward Spatial Humanities: Historical GIS and Spatial History* (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). +[^13]: Michael Curry, "Toward a Geography of a World Without Maps: Lessons from Ptolemy and Postal Codes," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95.3 (2005), 680-691. [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00481.x](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00481.x)