{"id":1724,"date":"2016-11-07T00:35:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T08:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/?p=1724"},"modified":"2016-11-07T00:35:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T08:35:53","slug":"locating-londons-past-through-mapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/2016\/11\/07\/locating-londons-past-through-mapping\/","title":{"rendered":"Locating London’s Past through Mapping"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this week\u2019s mapping exploration, I chose to look at Locating London\u2019s Past<\/a>, mainly because I do not consider myself well-versed in London\u2019s extensive history and I thought it would be indicative of Turnbull\u2019s arguments to see how this map would be received from someone who has little\/no contextual knowledge of the subject.<\/p>\n

Locating London\u2019s Past was created by a team of different UK-based universities and offers a virtual exploration of life in \u201cearly modern and eighteenth century London\u201d through a variety of different digital databases with records of crime, poor relief, taxation, elections, local administration, plague deaths and archaeological finds sourced from resources from the Old Bailey Online<\/a>, London Lives<\/a>, and the Centre for Metropolitan History<\/a>. In turn, the different data sets are able to be<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Rocque’s 1746 Map of London on Locating London’s Past<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

mapped on three different maps\u2014a GIS compliant version of John\u00a0Rocque\u2019s 1746 map of London, the first accurate OS map of London (1869-80), and a current Google Maps version.<\/p>\n

\"1869-1880<\/a>
1869-1880 Model of London on Locating London’s Past<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The project does not claim to offer an exhaustive account of London\u2019s history nor to showcase a particular demographic, but rather leaves data exploration and narrative construction up to the user because truthfully, little guidance is given on what to do. That being said, this mapping project is still largely<\/p>\n

\"Current<\/a>
Current map of London via Google Maps presented on Locating London’s Past<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

an operating example of Turnbull\u2019s contention that all maps are perspectival and subjective because \u201cwhat is on the map is determined not simply by what is in the environment but also by the human agent(s) that produced it\u201d (Exhibit 2, Page 1<\/a>). For example, the contributors to Locating London\u2019s Past chose to only include data from legalized sources and the data is limited for it only includes records for crime, taxation, elections, etc. Moreover, the project cites information about each data set on the Historical Background<\/a> page. For the Old Bailey Proceedings Online data set, the project notes that the original public collections were \u201cinexpensive and targeted initially at a popular audience\u201d, meaning the original versions were designed to sell\u2014not give completely accurate information. Additionally, it cites more \u201csignificant limitations\u201d because only half of the editions survived and the recorded transcripts were \u201cselective.\u201d It took a little bit of digging to find this information and it is not openly asserted that the information used for the mapping is largely inconclusive. Nevertheless, the project still chose to use this data for mapping purposes.<\/p>\n

This map largely reflects a government\u2019s point of view because the included data has origins from the governing body\u2014using tax, death, crime, and poor relief records as historical indicators. I think it also reflects the point of the view of the group of universities that chose the particular databases as they deemed the particular records as important by choosing them to be a part of the project. A team of different universities might have chosen completely different digital resources to map for a different agenda. The maps operate more as an accessory to the data rather than vice versa because the user must choose a dataset to map rather than to use a map to explore data. Also, not all data records are able to be mapped at all.<\/p>\n

This project is able to reveal how certain records are spatially relative to one another and how they could compare in different representations\/interpretations of the landscape for a given time period. It obscures how these events are historically relative to one another and contribute to the London\u2019s development. I think \u201cLocating London\u2019s Past\u201d tries to operate on the basis of representing information in an \u201cobjective\u201d way to present history (although Turnbull argues this is impossible to do) and thus provides little-to-no narrative on how the maps and datasets relate to one another. As of now, I feel as though I\u2019m just clicking on different data sets and looking at random points. If I were to reimagine a new map, I would provide a narrative on what the map is designed to be used for, and how its presence could be utilized for the understanding of an occurrence without trying to remain neutral because there\u2019s no way to do so anyways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this week\u2019s mapping exploration, I chose to look at Locating London\u2019s Past, mainly because I do not consider myself well-versed in London\u2019s extensive history and I thought it would … Continue reading “Locating London’s Past through Mapping”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}