Hello all! Welcome back.
This week I will be providing an update on the progress of my digital project! If I had to create an abstract for the work right now, this is what it would look like:
The Journey to Berlin: Identifying Migrant Routes.
Berlin, the capital of Germany, was founded sometime during the Medieval Period. Its exact settlement date is unknown, as is information surrounding its earliest years. Bioarchaeology has helped shed some light on this issue. Skeletons from the cemetery of St. Peter’s church, also known as Petriplatz, were excavated and isotope analysis was performed on some of earliest burials (n=13). The combination of oxygen and strontium isotope analysis allowed for an estimation of region of origin for the potential founders of the city. This project furthers that study by mapping in ArcGIS the potential regions of origin for seven of the individuals. In addition to this, it was hypothesized that migrants moved along known trade routes. A Medieval period trade route map overlays the country and Network analysis identifies the most likely route for each individual. The combination of isotope analysis, historical records, and digital tools like ArcGIS and StoryMaps works to interpret and visualize the data in a way that is largely absent from work by Anthropologists and Historians alike.
Since I am in the earliest stages of developing this project, the title and abstract are works-in-progress. As mentioned, I am currently using ArcGIS StoryMaps as my visualization platform. So far, I’m not overly impressed with the site, but I am also on a learning curve, so time will tell (the issues are most likely user error). To be as transparent in my work this week as possible, this is what has been accomplished. Unlike many of my classmates, my primary data source comes from isotope analysis from the skeletons I researched for my Master’s thesis, rather than literary historical documents. I do have historical contextual information I plan to incorporate into the storytelling aspect of the presentation. Anyhow, I was able to create an account for the StoryMap page, and then spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to think of a title. Ha. I’m happy with it so far. I then played around a bit with the site and the layout options and was able to upload a few images so I can work on the storytelling at the end of the project. I was able to upload the δ18O map of Germany, the 87Sr/86Sr map of Germany, and the map identifying the likely region of origin for the seven individuals, all that I created in ArcGIS. The next step is to upload then georeference the Medieval trade route map. I have practiced some with georeferencing to refresh my memory of how to do it, but I’ll need to do it again in the upcoming week.
Not everything has been smooth sailing. I no longer had access to ArcGIS desktop on my personal computer (and even if I did, it would crash it). I also didn’t have access to the program in the classroom lab. I did find some computers on campus that had the most recent ArcGIS software; however, when I started to work with my data, the old basemaps that I had used that were attached to all my data, are no longer available. After a really rough day of feeling defeated, I came home to a HUGE surprise. My mom sent me a new laptop with upgraded capabilities than my previous one (thanks mom!!), so I am now in the process of getting the new software on this computer and will be back at the project soon.
This project is an exploratory model. If it works out, more or less, in the way that I envision, I plan to incorporate aspects of this into my dissertation research. So, while 13 individuals is definitely not a large sample size, it provides me the knowledge of how to do the work and then implement it in a project for 250+ individuals. At least, that’s the plan. Stay tuned!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed your visit!
-The Migrant Isotopist
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