Ian Gregory, Paul S. Ell. Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies, and Scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. x + 227 pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-85563-1; $39.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-67170-5.
Reviewed by Mathew Novak (University of Western Ontario)
Published on H-HistGeog (February, 2009)
Commissioned by Arn M. Keeling (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Not Just for Geographers: GIS in Historical Research
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been used to build bridges between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, drawing together diverse fields through a common acknowledgment of the importance of space in structuring human activity. Although most often associated with geography, GIS has moved beyond its disciplinary origins and has been adapted for research projects in social research fields as disparate as sociology, modern literature, and economics. But GIS has also provoked internal fragmentation within some fields. This is especially acute in history, where a segment of traditional researchers has bridled at the notion of applying new technologies to their long-established craft. Detractors of GIS point to several inherent limitations in the software, especially in qualitative work, and the potential for GIS to define research questions rather than being used as a tool to answer them. They argue that GIS constrains rather than expands possible research. Far from restricting research questions, contend Ian Gregory and Paul S. Ell in Historical GIS, GIS “allows historians to re-examine radically the way that space is used in the discipline” (p. 1). Further, while acknowledging the critics of GIS, Gregory and Ell’s book demonstrates how GIS can and should be used to reveal geographical aspects inherent in research rather than serving merely as a novel tool to analyze a dataset.
Gregory and Ell’s work extensively details the process of creating a GIS to explore past landscapes and conditions. It provides theory substantiating each step, as well highlighting the practical considerations in designing, building, and using a Historical GIS (HGIS). This differs from much of the previous work addressing HGIS, such as the special issues of Social Science History (vol. 24, no. 3 [2000]) and Historical Geography (vol. 33 [2005]), which concentrate on the results found from charting the past using HGIS. While mapping is the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of GIS, the software also provides a powerful set of tools for statistical analysis of spatial data. Gregory and Ell discuss both mapping and higher-level analysis of spatial information, as well as the process of creating datasets used for GIS analysis. Through numerous examples, they demonstrate how both concrete features such as topography and abstract concepts such as wealth can be studied at scales from the local to the global.
GIS is essentially a database management program that handles spatially referenced data. It is, however, far more complex than traditional databases, since the management and analysis of spatial data must be considered in three-dimensions and spatial analysis goes beyond the scope of standard statistics. Time can also be attributed to the data, thus adding a fourth dimension and an entirely new set of conditions to handle and explore. Historical GIS outlines how to build a database that incorporates both time and space, with all the idiosyncrasies this entails. For example, the authors detail the difficulties in using census data for a series of years, since not only does the data need to be time-stamped, but the methods by which it was collected, the categories that were used, and the geographical boundaries at which it was aggregated can also differ for each period.
Gregory and Ell, both well-known in the field of HGIS, draw from their wealth of personal experience to illustrate how time can be dealt with using existing GIS software packages. As principal actors in the Great Britain HGIS project, they relay their experiences in building a national HGIS to store a vast amount of information pertaining to the national population to document its socioeconomic history. They caution that building a national HGIS is no small undertaking and suggest that it be set up not to answer one research question, but to address a wide range of topics at a variety of scales, shared among a research group. This demonstrates one of the great powers of GIS: the ability to work at an infinite number of spatial scales. Time, however, is not handled as smoothly by the current software, a reality to which any researcher who has tried to add temporal attributes to their analysis using GIS would likely attest. Gregory and Ell provide solutions to mitigate these shortcomings and make GIS accessible to those who, even if not experienced with the software, wish to implement it in their research agendas to simultaneously explore the spatial and temporal components of their data with powerful analytical and visualization techniques.
An appealing amalgam of theory and practice is presented to the reader. The authors provide relevant background to theoretically structure the problems of handling diverse types of spatio-temporal data. They also discuss strategies and tools for both managing and analyzing these databases. The book provides details of how GIS can be used in the research process to gain new insight into existing questions as well as creating entirely new ones. As such, this text compliments the two books on HGIS edited by Anne Kelly Knowles, Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (2002), and coedited with Amy Hillier, Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship (2008). Whereas this book is a how-to guide in building and using an HGIS, Knowles presents edited collections of research papers that use HGIS to shed new light on past environments.
Generally, the book follows a logical progression from planning, developing, and managing spatial-temporal databases, to visualizing and spatially analyzing the data once they have been created. However, two chapters detailing the steps involved in the implementation of a GIS for historical research disrupt this flow, and the volume would have been enhanced if the chapters were reordered and refocused to better serve the reader who is presumably most interested in how to handle time in one’s own GIS projects. The sixth chapter, which deals specifically with this issue, is perhaps the most important in the book and should have appeared much earlier, since the incorporation of time is essential to the structuring of the databases and their subsequent management and analysis. The book would have been strengthened if this topic had been covered in greater depth since this is what essentially sets this work apart from the general selection of GIS texts. The least important chapter--on the retrieval of digital data from the Internet and digital library clearinghouses--also seems out of place, and probably does not warrant an entire chapter; it would have been better suited as a section in the chapter on building GIS databases.
The book is written for a wide audience. No prior GIS experience is needed, as the authors walk the reader through the origins and development of GIS and its data structure. In terms of research agendas, most people who use spatial data will benefit from reading this book. Those who are well versed in the software will take away a heightened understanding of how to handle tricky temporal datasets. Although dealing nearly exclusively with past processes, this book will also be of value to those incorporating time in analyzing contemporary spatial situations, such as biologists studying animal movements.
By virtually recreating historical environments, HGIS offers great potential benefits to historical scholarship by detailing past circumstances and conditions; however, it has limitations. As the authors state, “GIS provides technical solutions, but it is still up to the researcher to solve scholarly ones” (p. 88). Readers of this well-executed work not only will be exposed to the tools that HGIS offers, but will also be challenged to consider both time and space in their understanding of the human condition.
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Citation:
Mathew Novak. Review of Gregory, Ian; Ell, Paul S., Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies, and Scholarship.
H-HistGeog, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23981
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