This week I am reviewing a digital history project!
The Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations. https://darmc.harvard.edu/. Created by Harvard
University. Edited by Michael McCormick, Eurydice Georganteli, Leland Grigoli,
Alexander More, Kelly Gibson, https://darmc.harvard.edu/team.
Reviewed October 2019.
*The website is currently under technical updates*
I am an anthropologist who studies migration and diet of
individuals in the Medieval period (France and Germany) through the use of chemical
analysis. Through isotopic signatures in skeletal remains, I estimate and map
region of origin, identifying migrants in the cemetery sample. Maps such as the
DARMC is useful for understanding the political and territorial changes occurring
before and during the Medieval period and region I study.
Their scholarship is current and
they are in progress of updating with more information, currently focusing on the Islamic regions. The
information presented is well communicated. Each mapped location that I further
investigated even offered a link to external sites for additional information. The
team of researchers have taken historical documentation and mapped it
accordingly. They are transparent in their knowledge gaps, for example, in the
Roman World under the layer “Cities and Settlements” they indicate three
different colors for locations that are confirmed, probable, or uncertain. I
think this is commendable for an esteemed university to state that they do not necessarily
have all the information.
The overall design of the site is fantastic.
They clearly spent a lot of time going through historical documents, creating
databases, and making the different layers for each map. The only suggestion I
have is one that may or may not be addressed due to how the ArcGIS software
works. When opening up a map, all the layers are automatically highlighted, so
you have to unclick everything before you can choose what you want to look at.
Also, differentiating major cities during the various time periods is difficult
as all the cities icons are the same shape and color. That makes it difficult
to compare without having to click and unclick the layers to see the change. The
website worked smoothly on my Google Pixel 3. The map was easy to navigate,
almost easier than the computer version, and the menus were easy to see and work with on the mobile device. I did not have access to a tablet, although I imagine
that it would work similarly to my Pixel 3.
The project is created for amateurs, students,
and scholars interested in many different facets of Roman and Medieval life. The
team acknowledges incomplete information within their website, for example, the
Islamic world, however, they state that they have begun to include this in their
work. What they do have available for the users more than makes up for areas
they are currently missing. They offer four distinct maps including:
Environmental History, which includes locations as well as scientific and
historical sources of climate information; Archaeology, which includes the
location of roman roads, archaeological excavations, shipwrecks, and more; the
Medieval World, which includes kingdom boundaries at different periods, major
towns, crusade routes, and way more; and the Roman World, which illustrates provinces, towns, cemeteries, roads, forts, and even baths, dams,
and waterwheels. Just
about anyone with an interest in Roman or Medieval European history would find
this website useful in some capacity.
The site offers the user a multitude of
layers that can be manipulated in various ways. I found that when you highlighted
a layer, you could look more closely at its legend and also change the opacity
if needed. One of my favorite features is the measure tool. In in printed
version, the various map layers would take up multiple pages at a magnification
that was easily readable. To save room, though, often times you find books print
small maps and have distance scales that do not correlate with each other, making
it difficult to “eyeball” distance or boundary lines accurately. This website allows
the user to not only layer the features that are most important, but also provide
a way to measure distance between places.
The DARMC team is a multidisciplinary group
spanning all levels of scholarship across multiple departments and universities.
Harvard included a number of undergraduate students in this project over the
years. Harvard’s current team includes undergraduate students at Harvard
College and professors from the department of History, Center for Geographic Analysis,
department of History of Art and Architecture and Medieval Studies, and the department
of History and Science of the Human Past. Other individuals who are currently working
on this project is a graduate student from the department of History at Brown University
and an assistant professor from the department of History at the University of
Dallas. Former scholars associated with the project come from the School of Architecture
at the University of Virginia, and London School of Economics.
The DARMC team uses ESRI ArcGIS software
products. Their geodatabases are downloadable and they provide instructions on
how to access certain data. They have a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
4.0 International License, meaning that their work is freely available to the
academic community and that it is not permissible to charge for access to the
data. Within the maps, it is possible to search using the search bar for something
specific. I searched for specific towns and then for a shipwreck. Each search pulled
a list of locations and then within the site location the user could review all
the different features that is recorded for that place.
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed your visit!
-The Medieval Isotopist
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