Mapping the Past. Geographical Information Systems (GISes) in the Context of Studying the Past

Abstract

Interactive online maps enable new perspectives and allow for multi-dimensional interaction with source data, becoming – thanks to that – an intuitive analytical resource for the purpose of exploring relations between the information, which were obscured up to this moment. Visualization of data in the form of interactive maps is becoming not only an attractive means for presenting the knowledge – e.g., in the form of diagrams, tables, and images – but, first and foremost, provides the user with a possibility to perform a more profound analysis of historical phenomena. Visualizations of this kind, revealing unnoticed relations and patterns, provoke new questions and prompt historians to search for the answers. Newly created interactive historical maps can become a starting point to formulate new representations of past phenomena and processes. They can also serve to organize the knowledge and to integrate source materials of different sorts. As they link various forms of data (linguistic, visual, geographical), they form an analytical tool used to interpret historical processes and phenomena that have been of interest, but also to explore new ones.