HESTIA
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Grant Holder:
Dr Elton Barker
HESTIA provides a new approach towards conceptions of space in the ancient world, supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Combining a variety of different methods, it examines the ways in which space is represented in Herodotus' History, in terms of places mentioned and geographic features described. It develops visual tools to capture the 'deep' topological structures of the text, extending beyond the usual two-dimensional Cartesian maps of the ancient world.
Herodotus' narrative is 'marked-up' in such a way so as to capture spatial information, including place names and regions. By attaching spatial co-ordinates to place names, the resulting database is fed into a geo-server in order to construct a 'Herodotus Earth', with a 'mash-up' of locations and information about them, as provided by Herodotus. The way Herodotus' narrative itself organises space and relations between places is interrogated, quantified and then represented via a series of network maps.
dynamic generation of KML, and GeoRSS from PostGIS spatial database for web dissemination. AJAX/HTML website for narrative timeline/map browsing based on JSON data files.
| Project start date: 2008-10 | Project end date: 2010-09 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| Resource sharing | Communication and collaboration |
| Cataloguing and indexing | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Coding and standardisation | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Collating | Data analysis |
| Collocating | Data analysis |
| Content analysis | Data analysis |
| Documentation | Strategy and project management |
| Geo-referencing and projection | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Graphical interaction (asynchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Graphical interaction (synchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Text encoding - referential | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Overlaying | Data analysis |
| Parsing | Data analysis |
| Prototyping | Strategy and project management |
| Searching and querying | Data analysis |
| Server scripting | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Textual interaction (asynchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Interface design | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Visualisation | Data analysis |
| Web browser scripting | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Spatial | Content types |
| text mining | Data analysis |
| Spatial data analysis | Data analysis |
| Statistical analysis | Data analysis |
| text | Content types |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created:
Dataset/structured data, Spatial, Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used:
Javascript, SQL, Java, Microsoft Excel, Google Earth, PostgreSQL, Eclipse, QGIS, Oxygen, CoffeeCup HTML Editor, GeoServer, EpiDoc Transcoder, TimeMap.js, Visone
Source material used:
The TEI-encoded texts of Herodotus' 'Histories' in English (Perseus:text:1999.01.0126) and Greek (Perseus:text:1999.01.0125) provided by the Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu).
Digital resource created:
A spatial database of spatial entities are their corresponding references in the text.
Webmapping services of the spatial data (KML, WFS, WMS)
A 'Narrative Time Map' allowing users to visualise the places referred to as they move through the text.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Data Formats created:
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), JPEG File Interchange Format (JPG), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Extensible Markup Language (XML) TEI-compliant, PostgreSQL, KML, GeoRSS, WMS, JSON
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Oxford |
| University of Southampton |
| University of Birmingham |
| The Open University |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Elton Barker,Stefan Bouzarovski,Chris Pelling |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Leif Isaksen |
| Title | HESTIA |
| Record created | 2010-02-03 |
| Record updated | 2010-06-09 17:50 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/3159 |
| Citation of record | Leif Isaksen: HESTIA. <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/3159> created: 2010-02-03, last updated 2010-06-09 17:50 |