Geospatial Classics: Teaching and Research Applications of GIS Technology

As a tool for research, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have developed into a mature and even standard means to examine the ancient world from a spatial perspective. Indeed, the accessibility of geographical means to examine evidence and the pervasiveness desire to do so has been described as “the spatial turn” (Guldi). In undergraduate teaching, the results of GIS-based research are ubiquitous and now a marketplace of textbooks dedicated to GIS exists to teach students to deploy these methods and technologies (e.g., Conolly and Lake).

The interplay of wealth, power, and identity has a profound impact on current political and social movements. Social and political groups, including the self-proclaimed “resistance” against Donald Trump and the alt-right, have created extensive social and political networks which have coalesced around issues relating to social norms, shared material culture, and wealth distribution. A combination of social network analysis (SNA) and geographic information systems (GIS) is increasingly deployed to examine these communities and the influence of geography on their development.

This paper blends traditional historiographic techniques with digital mapping technology to explore the relationship between the Roman army under the early empire, military geography, and the nuances of imperial power relations on the frontiers. I argue that by identifying environments in which the Roman army struggled to wage war and by mapping these environments through Geographic Information Systems (G.I.S.) technology, we can use geospatial analysis to better understand Roman policy and provincial resistance on the empire’s periphery.

This paper will argue that the Pelagios online platform Recogito, which enables users to annotate geographical references in digitised ancient documents and to create related map-based visualisations, is a valuable research tool for classicists, as it allows analysis of the textual sources in a spatial perspective.

This paper shows how semantic annotation in digital environments and GIS services can contribute to the study of premodern geographies, with particular regard to spatial narrative and conceptualizations of space.