Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship

Abstract

In the last decade, historical GIS has emerged as a promising new methodology for studying the past. Historical GIS is the use of geographic information systems software and allied geospatial methods for historical research and teaching. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship offers case studies and essays on key issues involving historical GIS, highlighting the unprecedented range of tools to visualize historical information in a geographical context. Quantitative social science historians are embracing GIS to facilitate the mapping of large datasets, but anyone with access to the software and the skills to use it can include mapping in research. This change is little short of revolutionary considering how few scholars or students made maps even ten years ago. Historical maps are suddenly in great demand as digitally modified, georeferenced images that enable researchers to study GIS as a visual medium of communication and analysis.

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