mapping space in an ancient historian: the herodotus encoded space-text-image archive (hestia)...

Mapping Space in an Ancient Historian: the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Image Archive (HESTIA)

Mapping Information with and without GeographyApproaches to Data Visualization and Structure in the Arts, Humanities and

Social Sciences 

e-Science Institute, Edinburgh, 30th September - 1st October 2009

Principal Investigator – Elton Barker, The Open UniversityCo-Investigator – Chris Pelling, Christ Church, OxfordCo-Investigator – Stefan Bouzaroski, University of BirminghamIT consultant – Leif Isaksen, University of Southampton

Approaches to space in Herodotus

A map of Herodotus’ world, according to Wikipedia…

Source of digital text: Perseus

Herodotus in XML

The HESTIA Database

HESTIA in GIS: all placesred = settlement; yellow = region; blue = physical feature

GIS: all placenames (Pontus region)

GIS: all settlements in book 1 (Aegean region)

GIS: reference count (settlements)

GIS: co-reference network density (regions)

Payek: e.g. Internet industries (after Krebs)

219 nodes (companies), 631 edges (partnerships), 3 colours (kind) the nodal size is proportional to its betweenness

Google Earth: mashup of locations in Herodotus

Google Timeline (after Nick Rabinowitz)

• To be continued…

• For results, as and when they occur, go to: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/hestia/ E.T.E.Barker@open.ac.uk

• End of project conference: ‘Imagining space in texts: developing new analytical techniques for classicists and geographers’, 1-3 July 2010