what are places?

Great Britain Historical GIS Project:A Vision of Britain though Time

What are Places?

Humphrey Southall(University of Portsmouth/

Great Britain Historical GIS)


What kinds of geographical entity?

• Traditional GIS very focused on landscape features• But interpretation of historical texts is about units and places

30th November 2011 2

Gazetteer Type

Landscape Features

Administrative Units

Places

Typed Yes Yes No

Visible Yes No No

Defined by Existence in landscape

Legal establishment as corporate bodies

Shared perception; mention in texts and discourse – “social tagging”

Defined as (mostly) points legally defined polygons

(mostly) fuzzy polygons


Selectedplaces near here


DOME

HOMESun inthe Sands

The Valley

Royal Standard

Greenwich


The Sun in the Sands



Sun in the Sands Rotary



Sun in the Sands as a place



Sun in Sands bus map



Sun in the Sands as a neighborhood



Sun in the Sands Conservation Area


It is a bounded polygon!!


Nag’s Head, Islington, c.1905



Nag’s Head today



Nag’s Head in Wikipedia



Nag’s Head Town Center


It is a bounded polygon!!


Elephant and Castle then and now



Elephant and Castle is definitely a place



England’s most deprived areas


• NB units are SOAs, so blame Dave Martin


Jaywick versus Breckfield



Breckfield? No such place



Four features or one place?



Feature types in C19 Gazetteers


Place Feature Type String Source

Gruinard, Ross-shire

a bay, an island, and two streams Groome

Ripon, Yorkshire a city, a township, a parish, a sub-district, a district, a liberty, and a diocese

Imperial

Gloucester parliamentary and municipal borough, city, market and county town, and river-port

Bartholomew

Burghead, Moray a promontory, a bay, a small town, and a quoad sacra parish

Groome

Laxey, Isle of Man a village, a bay, a headland, a rivulet, and a vale

Imperial


What kinds of geographical entity?

• Crowd-sourced extraction of names from geo-referenced historical maps are the obvious basis for rapid construction of large historical gazetteers


Gazetteer Type

Landscape Features

Administ-rative Units

Places Nameson Maps

Typed Yes Yes No ?

Visible Yes No No On the map

Defined by Existencein land-scape

Law Shared perception,discourse

Nameson maps!

Defined as (mostly) points

legally defined

polygons

(mostly) fuzzy

polygons

(Offset)points

what are places?

Documents

vision of britain

traditional gis

sands rotary30th

timenags head today30th

timenags head town center30th

sands bus map30th

sands conservation area30th

bounded polygon