Roads are an important aspect of historical geographies. There are cases in which the courses of historical roads are known, either because maps or archaeological remains exist. However, there are cases in which a road is mentioned in written texts, but there is no further evidence, like archaeological remains or ...
(Show more)Roads are an important aspect of historical geographies. There are cases in which the courses of historical roads are known, either because maps or archaeological remains exist. However, there are cases in which a road is mentioned in written texts, but there is no further evidence, like archaeological remains or historical maps, of this road. Furthermore, in many cases only fragmentary remains of the road do exist. For these cases, where the exact course of the roads in question is unknown, GIS can provide the tools to model the unknown roads. Wayfinding algorithms, like least cost paths, can calculate routes over a landscape, based on assigned cost values. This is a simple, yet efficient way to calculate historical roads.
But which factors are important for the routing of historical roads, besides the relief and rivers? Not just physical factors play an important role, but social, cultural, political and military factors as well. To model historical roads, these factors have to be identified and formalized. Formalization leads to a theoretical model, which can then be implemented in a GIS. The modeling algorithms of a GIS produce sharp results. However, the nature of the research questions allows only fuzzy interpretations. Therefore, visualization of the results has to take this fact into consideration. Furthermore, it is important to think about the epistemological consequences. Can we learn about the past, using GIS? And if so, which aspects of the “historical reality” are discernible? The fuzziness of the visualization and the observation of the observation will help to understand the model of the routes and its restrictions. Furthermore, it allows flexible integration with other historical data.
This paper deals with the following questions:
• What epistemological challenges are involved in a historical GIS analysis?
• Which factors are important for road routing?
• How can these factors be formalized as a prerequisite to include them into GIS based models?
• Which methods of visualization are appropriate for the models of historical roads?
Theoretical considerations which will be discussed are based on social geographic approaches, like systems theory, cybernetics and observer theory. Especially the epistemological questions of GIS in historical research will be highlighted. This approach will provide a framework to integrate the considerations and theories from the contributing disciplines like historiography, transport and social geography, cultural history and archaeology.
Furthermore, two case studies will be presented. The first one is a medieval Byzantine road in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, which is mentioned in documents from the 13th and 14th Century AD. The second case study deals with historical Buddhist pilgrimage routes from the 10th and 11th Century AD in the Western Himalayans. The various aspects of the two cases will be highlighted and the differences discussed.
(Show less)