A History of Place in the Digital Age (Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities)

Digital methods, media and platforms are playing an increasingly critical role in the formation and analysis of place in the contemporary world but to date. At the same time, the so-called 'spatial turn' in the Digital Humanities (and the humanities and social sciences more broadly) and the maturing of the fields of Quantitative and Critical Geographical Information Systems have changed our perception of place, and our perception of how we interpret place, and its sister concept of space. The same applies to place created by, and derived from, historical and cultural sources. Hence, the need for a book length study which traces a trajectory between historical/cultural constructions of place - what this author calls 'humanistic place' - and applications of the GeoWeb. This book provides such a trajectory by examining current approaches to the analysis and definition of place in three fundamental historical and cultural discourse spaces of the humanities, text, maps, and objects. Next to this, it examines how place is created in the contemporary digital world. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 List of figures 9 Acknowledgments 10 1. Spatial humanities in the digital age: The key debates 12 Introduction 12 A new label for an old problem 13 The spatial humanities and the limits of shallow mapping 16 From spatial turn to spatial literacy 19 Digital humanities; spatial humanities 20 The GeoWeb: the Internet’s own spatial turn 22 The humanities and GIS 24 Conclusion: from spatial humanities to deep mapping 27 References 30 2. The longue durée of the spatial humanities: Part I: Communicating place 34 Introduction 34 Place in the Ancient World 35 Case study: chorography and the humanizing of geography 37 Socially constructed place 44 Collectivizing place at the speed of light 45 Place as a social construct 49 Place and communication 50 From WWW to GeoWeb 50 Conclusions 52 References 54 3. The longue durée of the spatial humanities: Part II: The case of archaeology 57 Introduction 57 GIS and archaeology 58 Archaeology and neogeography 61 Conclusion 64 References 64 4. Text and place 66 Introduction: The textuality of space, and the spatiality of text 66 Collective text, collective place 68 Text as public space vs. private space 69 Communication 71 Organization 74 Reading 78 Conclusion 83 References 84 5. Spatial humanities and neogeography 87 Introduction: user generated place 87 Critical approaches to the contemporary GeoWeb 89 The GeoWeb and research: Citizen (Spatial) Humanists? 91 Motivations 92 Scale: the paradox of neogeography 94 Human bias meets geometric objectivity: cultural appropriations of the GeoWeb 96 The GeoWeb and the spatial humanities 98 Spatial humanities as crowdsourcing 98 Base maps 101 Conclusion 103 References 104 6. Spatial narrative 107 Introduction: the idea of spatial narrative 107 Spatial narrative and Plato’s Cave 111 Narratives of change 113 Narratives of power 114 Narratives of experience 117 Conclusion 119 References 121 7. The structure of geodata 123 Introduction 123 From paper to digital citation 126 The gazetteer as an imperial tool 127 Gazetteers and the WWW 128 Case study: Cyprus 131 Conclusion 138 References 139 8. Motion in place 142 Introduction 142 Embodied and disembodied place: the tensions of cartography 143 Shaping the landscape 149 Case study: corpse roads 151 Case study: Experimental archaeology and motion 154 Conclusion 160 References 161 9. Conclusion 164 Conclusion: towards an understanding of deep mapping in the humanities 164 References 169 Index 170 A History of Place in the Digital Age explores the history and impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related digital mapping technologies in humanities research. Providing a historical and methodological discussion of place in the most important primary materials which make up the human record, including text and artefacts, the book explains how these materials frame, form and communicate location in the age of the internet. This leads in to a discussion of how the World Wide Web distorts and skews place, amplifying some voices and reducing others. Drawing on several connected case studies from the early modern period to the present day, the spatial writings of early modern antiquarians are explored, as are the roots of approaches to place in archaeology and philosophy. This forms the basis for a review of place online, through the complex history of the invention of the internet, in to the age of the interactive web and social media. By doing so, the book explores the key themes of spatial power and representation which these technologies frame. A History of Place in the Digital Age will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in a variety of humanities disciplines with an interest in understanding how technology can help them undertake research on spatial themes. It will be of interest as primary work to historians of technology, media and communications. A History of Place in the Digital Age explores the history and impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related digital mapping technologies in humanities research. Providing a historical and methodological discussion of place in the most important primary materials which make up the human record, including text and artefacts, the book explains how these materials frame, form and communicate location in the age of the internet. This leads in to a discussion of how the World Wide Web distorts and skews place, amplifying some voices and reducing others. 0Drawing on several connected case studies from the early modern period to the present day, the spatial writings of early modern antiquarians are explored, as are the roots of approaches to place in archaeology and philosophy. This forms the basis for a review of place online, through the complex history of the invention of the internet, in to the age of the interactive web and social media. By doing so, the book explores the key themes of spatial power and representation which these technologies frame