Anna FokapersName, Elton BarkerpersName, Kyriaki KonstantinidoupersName, Brady KieslingpersName (2023date). “Mapping Antiquity in Collaboration: The Digital Periegesis Project.” Digital Humanities 2023 (DH2023), Graztitle·a, GrazplaceName.
Object of study — Pausaniasterm·key's Periegesis Helladosterm·dom, annotated for the places, people and times it describes.
Research question — What does it take for researchers and digital research infrastructuresterm·dom to collaborate on analysing an ancient narrative of space?
Contribution — Argues that pre-modern space is not reducible to coordinates, and that maps should interrogate a narrative rather than illustrate it.
phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | collaborative semantic annotation of ancient spatial narratives — “Against this backdrop, this paper examines the affordances and challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, projects and contemporary digital research infrastructures for the analysis of ancient narratives.” | |
| claim-type | method — “Additionally, the Digital Periegesis project team is attempting to break new ground in applying linked data methods and tools and, as such, is establishing a new model of collaboration.” | |
| method — evidence | — “This long research paper then discusses scientific collaboration between researchers and research infrastructures more generally, incorporating information about space, time and people into a reflexive process to illuminate change and development as a way of understanding place fully.” | |
| research question — evidence | — “Against this backdrop, this paper examines the affordances and challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, projects and contemporary digital research infrastructures for the analysis of ancient narratives.” | |
| contribution — evidence | — “The overarching argument presented here is that Digital Periegesis is not simply a collaboration of scholars from different backgrounds and with different skills, which is a standard interdisciplinary practice in Digital Humanities.” | |
| transfer | from geography (geographic information science): GIS and spatial analysis carried into the reading of ancient narrative, together with an explicit statement of where the transfer breaks - the formalism cannot hold the uncertainty that makes the material interesting — “More recently, the spatial analysis of texts via Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is trending as a research method.” | transfers[0] |
| mechanism | Place is produced by what historical agents did in a space and what they left there, so a toponym with coordinates is not yet a place — “Rather, space becomes place through interaction with historical agents and the human footprint left on the ground in the form of monuments, religious sites and other infrastructures.” | mechanisms[0] |
| mechanism | Reuse runs in both directions: the project takes a TEI text and a shared annotation tool, and returns enriched text and new place records to the infrastructures it borrowed from — “Examples of such reuse and recycling include yet are not limited to, drawing on other resources, namely Wikidata, to provide URIs; providing the enriched, annotated Pausanias’s text back to the Perseus Digital Library; and returning new place information to the Pleiades structured vocabulary of ancient place data.” | mechanisms[1] |
| mechanism | A private instance of the shared tool lets the project reach archaeological databases and annotate at a finer grain than the public version supports — “At another level, the Digital Periegesis project team hosts a private and customized instance of Recogito in order to make use of actual archaeological databases, such as the German Archaeological Institute’s DAI/ ARACHNE for semantically annotating the more granular aspects of Pausanias's description (temples, statues, etc.).” | mechanisms[2] |
| mechanism | Being the heaviest user of a shared tool turns the project's experience into a contribution in its own right, feeding back into that tool's redesign — “The fact that our use of Recogito is the most extensive, dense and complex application of this platform also goes to underline the value of the experience that we can share with the rest of the DH community, as Recogito itself undergoes a major overhaul.” | mechanisms[3] |
| builds-on | the Hestia project (Bouzarovski–Barker 2016; Barker–Pelling 2016) — “Specifically, our project derives directly from the Hestia project’s blended methodological approach to exploring literary geography, which had highlighted ways in which texts organise spatial knowledge, based on relations between places (Bouzarovski–Barker 2016; Barker–Pelling 2016).” | claim_relations[0] |
| builds-on | spatial humanities (Bodenhamer–Corrigan–Harris 2010) — “Our project is essentially theoretically and methodologically inspired by the field of spatial humanities (e.g. Bodenhamer–Corrigan–Harris 2010).” | claim_relations[1] |
| builds-on | Recogito / the Pelagios Network of Partners — “Collaboration is thus manifested in reusing data— a TEI digital text, as well as reusing tools, more specifically the semantic annotation tool Recogito, developed by the Pelagios Network of Partners.” | claim_relations[2] |
| extends | the Hestia project's blended approach to literary geography — “Specifically, our project derives directly from the Hestia project’s blended methodological approach to exploring literary geography, which had highlighted ways in which texts organise spatial knowledge, based on relations between places (Bouzarovski–Barker 2016; Barker–Pelling 2016).” | claim_relations[3] |
| extends | Bodenhamer and the spatial humanities framing of locating exegesis in space and time — “Our project is essentially theoretically and methodologically inspired by the field of spatial humanities (e.g. Bodenhamer–Corrigan–Harris 2010).” | claim_relations[4] |
| supports | the critique that GIS structure is ill-suited to humanities uncertainty — “Yet, the very systematic structure of a GIS is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019).” | claim_relations[5] |
| sense | space - as coordinates and toponyms: what a GIS records, and explicitly not what mapping antiquity amounts to — “Mapping pre-modern space is rarely a matter of documenting toponyms or establishing precise coordinates.” | senses[0] |
| sense | place - as space that historical agents have acted in and marked: the sense the project is after — “Rather, space becomes place through interaction with historical agents and the human footprint left on the ground in the form of monuments, religious sites and other infrastructures.” | senses[1] |
| sense | map - as illustration: a picture accompanying an argument, which the project rejects — “using maps as visual portals into narratives, as a means to interrogate rather than merely illustrate spatial information” | senses[2] |
| sense | collaboration - the standard sense: scholars of different backgrounds and skills working together, which the paper says is ordinary DH practice — “The overarching argument presented here is that Digital Periegesis is not simply a collaboration of scholars from different backgrounds and with different skills, which is a standard interdisciplinary practice in Digital Humanities.” | senses[3] |
| sense | collaboration - the sense claimed as new: reciprocal exchange with the infrastructures themselves, taking data and tools and giving enriched data back — “Additionally, the Digital Periegesis project team is attempting to break new ground in applying linked data methods and tools and, as such, is establishing a new model of collaboration.” | senses[4] |
| audit | uncertainty —contrasted-with→ Geographic Information Systems — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the span writes 'GIS' and calls it ill-suited to capturing uncertainty; contrasted-with is loose. — “Yet, the very systematic structure of a GIS is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019).” | concept_edges[1] |
| audit | Recogito —part-of→ Pelagios — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the span says Recogito was DEVELOPED BY the Pelagios Network; part-of is loose. — “Collaboration is thus manifested in reusing data— a TEI digital text, as well as reusing tools, more specifically the semantic annotation tool Recogito, developed by the Pelagios Network of Partners.” | concept_edges[3] |
| audit | Recogito —operationalised-as→ semantic annotation — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the span calls Recogito a semantic annotation TOOL; operationalised-as is loose. — “The semantic annotation tool Recogito has been attracting increasing adoption in both the research into, and teaching of, places in historical records (Palladino 2016, 2021; O'Doherty 2021; Dunn–Vitale 2021).” | concept_edges[4] |
| audit | ARACHNE —part-of→ Recogito — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its span and kept, but a Recogito instance USES the ARACHNE database; part-of is the wrong type. — “At another level, the Digital Periegesis project team hosts a private and customized instance of Recogito in order to make use of actual archaeological databases, such as the German Archaeological Institute’s DAI/ ARACHNE for semantically annotating the more granular aspects of Pausanias's description (temples, statues, etc.).” | concept_edges[8] |
| weight | ARACHNE —part-of→ Recogito — 0.9 — “At another level, the Digital Periegesis project team hosts a private and customized instance of Recogito in order to make use of actual archaeological databases, such as the German Archaeological Institute’s DAI/ ARACHNE for semantically annotating the more granular aspects of Pausanias's description (temples, statues, etc.).” | concept_edges[8] |
| for which use | limitation — any GIS treatment of humanities material: THE VERY SYSTEMATIC STRUCTURE OF A GIS IS FREQUENTLY ILL-SUITED TO CAPTURING ASPECTS OF UNCERTAINTY AND AMBIGUITY THAT TYPICALLY CHARACTERISE, AND EXPLAIN INTEREST IN, HUMANITIES D[ata] — “Yet, the very systematic structure of a GIS is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019).” | limitations[0] |
| for which use | limitation — the same scope as limitations[0] - the structure that makes the tool useful is the one that excludes the ambiguity — “Yet, the very systematic structure of a GIS is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019).” | limitations[1] |
| for which use | limitation — any assumed compatibility of the two traditions: CONTEMPORARY GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE AND HISTORICAL MODES OF DESCRIBING SPACE OFTEN APPEAR TO HAVE DISPARATE, EVEN INCOMPATIBLE, VIEWPOINTS OF THE WORLD — “While contemporary geographic information science and historical modes of describing space often appear to have disparate, even incompatible, viewpoints of the world, there is a growing ecosystem that seeks to remedy the complexity of ancient space.” | limitations[2] |
| for which use | limitation — everything beyond space: the extension to time and people belongs to a SECOND PHASE OF THE PROJECT financed from 2022 to 2026, still ahead at the time of writing — “In the second phase of the project that is financed by the Swedish Research Council from 2022 to 2026 (Vetenskapsrådet 2021-02799) the Digital Periegesis project is set out to investigate descriptions of time and people and to incorporate this to the ongoing Digital Periegesis’s visualisation.” | limitations[3] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | The paper states that the systematic structure of GIS - the class of spatial infrastructure its own method is built on - is frequently ill-suited to the uncertainty and ambiguity characteristic of humanities data. — “Yet, the very systematic structure of a GIS is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019).” | limitations[0] |
| limitation | The structure that makes a GIS useful is the same structure that cannot hold the uncertainty and ambiguity humanities data is made of — “Yet, the very systematic structure of a GIS is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019).” | limitations[1] |
| limitation | Contemporary geographic information science and historical ways of describing space are described as potentially incompatible, not merely different — “While contemporary geographic information science and historical modes of describing space often appear to have disparate, even incompatible, viewpoints of the world, there is a growing ecosystem that seeks to remedy the complexity of ancient space.” | limitations[2] |
| limitation | The second phase, extending the work from space to time and people, was still ahead at the time of writing — “In the second phase of the project that is financed by the Swedish Research Council from 2022 to 2026 (Vetenskapsrådet 2021-02799) the Digital Periegesis project is set out to investigate descriptions of time and people and to incorporate this to the ongoing Digital Periegesis’s visualisation.” | limitations[3] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | Mapping pre-modern space is not mainly a matter of toponyms or coordinates; space becomes place through human interaction. — “Mapping pre-modern space is rarely a matter of documenting toponyms or establishing precise coordinates. Rather, space becomes place through interaction with historical agents” | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | Contemporary geographic information science and historical ways of describing space can look incompatible. — “contemporary geographic information science and historical modes of describing space often appear to have disparate, even incompatible, viewpoints of the world” | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | The maps are meant to interrogate the narrative, not to illustrate it. — “using maps as visual portals into narratives, as a means to interrogate rather than merely illustrate spatial information” | content_tags.findings[2] |
| finding | the project's use of the shared annotation tool is the heaviest yet attempted, which is itself offered as a contribution — “The fact that our use of Recogito is the most extensive, dense and complex application of this platform also goes to underline the value of the experience that we can share with the rest of the DH community, as Recogito itself undergoes a major overhaul.” | content_tags.findings[3] |
| finding | tools built for this project were taken up elsewhere, including by the British Library — “Additionally, the Digital Periegesis research group is developing open source tools in collaboration for enabling the visualization and search of geospatial information specifically in the re-launch of Peripleo — which has subsequently been taken up by other projects, notably the British Library.” | content_tags.findings[4] |
| finding | the collaboration model is reciprocal: the project returns enriched text and new place records to the infrastructures it drew on — “But collaboration, recycling and reuse of data and resources does not end there for the Digital Periegesis project team. Examples of such reuse and recycling include yet are not limited to, drawing on other resources, namely Wikidata, to provide URIs; providing the enriched, annotated Pausanias’s text back to the Perseus Digital Library; and returning new place information to the Pleiades structured vocabulary of ancient place data” | content_tags.findings[5] |
| definition | cartography — “Spatial analytical methods predate the field of digital humanities, most notably through cartography, the practice of drawing and studying maps.” | content_tags.definitions[0] |
| definition | Periegesis Hellados — “namely Pausanias’s Periegesis Hellados ( Description of Greece ), a ten-volume description of Greek towns, villages, monuments, works of art and their histories from Attica to Phocis, following a circuit around the Peloponnese” | content_tags.definitions[1] |
| key-terms | spatial analysis, GIS, gazetteer, annotation, toponym, research infrastructure, Pausanias, spatial humanities, Geographic Information Systems, semantic annotation, Recogito, Pelagios, Pleiades, Wikidata, Peripleo, linked data, TEI, toponyms, uncertainty, ambiguity, cartography |
| claim type | method — a second reading reaching the same value; recorded: method — “Additionally, the Digital Periegesis project team is attempting to break new ground in applying linked data methods and tools and, as such, is establishing a new model of collaboration.” | alternatives.claim_type |
| phenomenon | collaborative semantic annotation of ancient spatial narratives — a second reading reaching the same value; recorded: collaborative semantic annotation of ancient spatial narratives — “This ecosystem of tools, content and communities about ancient place and space illustrate how collaboration within the field of digital humanities can be an opportunity for scientific discovery.” | alternatives.phenomenon |
Full text — tagged
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Spatial analytical methods predate the field of digital humanities, most notably through cartographyterm·mth, the practice of drawing and studying maps. More recently, the spatial analysisterm·mth of texts via Geographic Information Systemsterm·mth (GISterm·key) is trending as a research method. Mapping pre-modern space is rarely a matter of documenting toponymsterm·dom or establishing precise coordinates. Rather, space becomes place through interaction with historical agents and the human footprint left on the ground in the form of monuments, religious sites and other infrastructures. While contemporary geographic information science and historical modes of describing space often appear to have disparate, even incompatible, viewpoints of the world, there is a growing ecosystem that seeks to remedy the complexity of ancient space. This ecosystem of tools, content and communities about ancient place and space illustrate how collaboration within the field of digital humanities can be an opportunity for scientific discovery.
Against this backdrop, this paper examines the affordances and challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, projects and contemporary digital research infrastructuresterm·dom for the analysis of ancient narratives. Our case study is a well-known ancient narrative of space: namely Pausaniasterm·key’s Periegesis Helladosterm·dom ( Description of Greece ), a ten-volume description of Greek towns, villages, monuments, works of art and their histories from Attica to Phocis, following a circuit around the Peloponnese. The Digital Periegesis project, funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation (MAW 2017.0057; 2018–2021), and comprising an interdisciplinary team of scholars builds on existing digital spatial research infrastructuresterm·dom, using maps as visual portals into narratives, as a means to interrogate rather than merely illustrate spatial information. In the second phase of the project that is financed by the Swedish Research Council from 2022 to 2026 (Vetenskapsrådet 2021-02799) the Digital Periegesis project is set out to investigate descriptions of time and people and to incorporate this to the ongoing Digital Periegesis’s visualisation.
This long research paper then discusses scientific collaboration between researchers and research infrastructuresterm·dom more generally, incorporating information about space, time and people into a reflexive process to illuminate change and development as a way of understanding place fully. From the outset, the Digital Periegesis’ project team utilize an existing eco-system of digital spatial research infrastructureterm·dom and analysis but also additional and customized infrastructures that are used more widely, beyond Pausaniasterm·key’s Description of Greece. The overarching argument presented here is that Digital Periegesis is not simply a collaboration of scholars from different backgrounds and with different skills, which is a standard interdisciplinary practice in Digital Humanities. Additionally, the Digital Periegesis project team is attempting to break new ground in applying linked dataterm·mth methods and tools and, as such, is establishing a new model of collaboration.
At one level, this collaboration promotes a bottom up approach: that is establishing workflows and pipelines, involving a broader community of classicists, archaeologists and digital humanists. Collaboration is thus manifested in reusing data— a TEIterm·mth digital text, as well as reusing tools, more specifically the semantic annotationterm·mth tool Recogitoterm·mth, developed by the Pelagiosterm·dom Network of Partners. At another level, the Digital Periegesis project team hosts a private and customized instance of Recogitoterm·mth in order to make use of actual archaeological databases, such as the German Archaeological Institute’s DAI/ ARACHNEterm·mth for semantically annotating the more granular aspects of Pausaniasterm·key's description (temples, statues, etc.). But collaboration, recycling and reuse of data and resources does not end there for the Digital Periegesis project team. Examples of such reuse and recycling include yet are not limited to, drawing on other resources, namely Wikidataterm·mth, to provide URIs; providing the enriched, annotated Pausaniasterm·key’s text back to the Perseus Digital Libraryterm·mth; and returning new place information to the Pleiadesterm·mth structured vocabulary of ancient place data. Additionally, the Digital Periegesis research group is developing open source tools in collaboration for enabling the visualization and search of geospatial information specifically in the re-launch of Peripleoterm·mth — which has subsequently been taken up by other projects, notably the British Library.
Our project is essentially theoretically and methodologically inspired by the field of spatial humanitiesterm·dom (e.g. Bodenhamer–Corrigan–Harris 2010). As is well rehearsed, the value of ‘locating historical and cultural exegesis more explicitly in space and time’ (Bodenhamer 2010: 28) has greatly assisted historical inquiry into places (Gregory and Ell 2007; Gregory–Geddes 2014). Applications of Geographic Information Systemsterm·mth (GISterm·key) hold the promise of facilitating the gathering, management and analysis of spatially based data systematically (Gregory–Healey 2007; Dunn 2019). Yet, the very systematic structure of a GISterm·key is frequently ill-suited to capturing aspects of uncertaintyterm·dom and ambiguityterm·dom that typically characterise, and explain interest in, Humanities data (Gregory–Healey 2007: 641; Harris–Bergeron–Rouse 2011: 228; Dunn 2019). Specifically, our project derives directly from the Hestiaterm·dom project’s blended methodological approach to exploring literary geography, which had highlighted ways in which texts organise spatial knowledge, based on relations between places (Bouzarovski–BarkerpersName 2016; BarkerpersName–Pelling 2016). The semantic annotationterm·mth tool Recogitoterm·mth has been attracting increasing adoption in both the research into, and teaching of, places in historical records (Palladino 2016, 2021; O'Doherty 2021; Dunn–Vitale 2021). The fact that our use of Recogitoterm·mth is the most extensive, dense and complex application of this platform also goes to underline the value of the experience that we can share with the rest of the DH community, as Recogitoterm·mth itself undergoes a major overhaul.
To conclude, by finding ways to compartmentalize concepts of space, people and time in a centuries’ old narrative the Digital Periegesis research team had the opportunity to engage and consequentially to collaborate with relevant content, but also tools and communities. Ultimately and through this knowledge production process, the Digital Periegesis project team are moving beyond the confines of a Digital Humanities research project and are contributing and enriching the wider and global landscape of digital humanities socio-technical research infrastructureterm·dom.