Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in
Social Science Computer Review
use signatures in hotel registers to
explore how travelers moved around the northeastern United States in
the early twentieth century.
Economic and Social History
Work in this broad area is more limited, but two papers in particular
stand out. In both cases they make use of the ability of a GIS to inte-
grate a wide variety of disparate sources to develop new insights into
the topic under study. Thomas and Ayres, “An Overview: The Differ-
ence Slavery Made,”
American Historical Review
108 (2003): 1298-1307
presents a detailed analysis of two American counties, one on either
side of the Mason-Dixon Line, to investigate a wide variety of factors
associated with the local economy and society to investigate the extent
to which slavery was a root cause of the Civil War. A. K. Knowles and
R. G. Healey, “Geography, Timing, and Technology: A GIS-Based Anal-
ysis of Pennsylvania's Iron Industry, 1825-1875,”
Journal of Economic His-
tory
66 (2006): 608-34 brings together a wide variety of variables associ-
ated with the development of the iron industry over a long time period
and, by stressing the importance of temporal and spatial differences, is
able to challenge more general studies in this area. A third paper, R. G.
Healey and T. R. Stamp, “Historical GIS as a Foundation for the Analysis
of Regional Economic Growth: Theoretical, Methodological, and Prac-
tical Issues,”
Social Science History
24 (2000): 575-612 presents an earlier
perspective on this type of work that stresses the database construction
challenges and the opportunities that these open up in this field.
Ancient and Medieval History
The above discussion suggests that historical GIS research has largely
concentrated on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This seems to
fit with early criticisms that the technology works best in a data-rich en-
vironment. W hile there is some truth in this, the progress that has been
made using GIS to study medieval and even earlier histories suggests
that there is also much potential to apply it to periods when sources are
very limited, fragmentary, and difficult to use. This is generally because
