| Project start date: 2008-10 | Project end date: 2010-09 |
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.
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| Cataloguing and indexing | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Coding and standardisation | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Collocating | Data analysis |
| Content analysis | Data analysis |
| Documentation | Strategy and project management |
| General project management | Strategy and project management |
| Geo-referencing and projection | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Graphical interaction (asynchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Graphical interaction (synchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Interface design | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Overlaying | Data analysis |
| Parsing | Data analysis |
| Prototyping | Strategy and project management |
| Searching and querying | Data analysis |
| Spatial data analysis | Data analysis |
| Statistical analysis | Data analysis |
| Text mining | Data analysis |
| Use of existing digital data | Data capture |
| Visualisation | Data analysis |
| Web browser scripting | Data publishing and dissemination |
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).
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.
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| The Open University |
| University of Birmingham |
| University of Oxford |
| Principal staff member: | Elton Barker,Stefan Buzar,Chris Pelling |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s) |
| External expertise: |
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| This project description was developed as part of the ICT Guides project. |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Leif Isaksen |
| Title | HESTIA |
| Record created | 2010-02-03 |
| Record updated | 2010-02-03 17:31 |
| 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 2010-02-03 17:31 |