The Digital Gazetteer of the Song Dynasty accompanies the book, Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of Song China (960-1276 CE). Much of the maps show the different hierarchies of spatial geography – differently ranked circuits, prefectures, counties, towns and markets. Much of these divisions of the time were based on authority. These maps were assumed to be changed and modified in order to match the needs of officials and emperors in power. These spatial transformations greatly affected social organization, foreign relations, revenue, and imperial power, and assumes that geography is based on social context of the time. This also reveals the authority of the time and their domestic and foreign policies, which could be seen in the ways the geographical structures of their controlled territory had changed over time.
However, for scholarship purposes historical information is commonly derived from text. The challenge is to relate many of the textbook names and entities to a lot of the ground that is constantly being changed. The map can be used for comparison but cannot directly tell us the historical changes that has been built on it prior to its existing shape and form. Maps and terrain change constantly, so we cannot assume very much of history without looking at other maps at the same time. Also, it can be assumed that these maps were changed based on the agendas of influential political figures. The ruling perspectives behind these maps can easily over exaggerate power and domain.
An alternative map would be one that morphs land over time to see how borders have changed over different ruling periods. This map could also be used to connect to prosperity at the time to see if there were local administrative trends in what worked well and what didn’t. It would also be useful to connect different maps more clearly to the ruling house of the time to fully understand the social context behind geographical history.