A place in history: a guide to using GIS in historical research

CHAPTER 6: VISUALISATION FROM GIS

6.3 Developing understanding from basic mapping through GIS

Although it is rarely efficient to create GIS data simply to produce a map, once data are in GIS formats their potential use for mapping purposes becomes enormous. In particular, once it is easy to map a dataset then exploring the geography within the data becomes easy. A simple example of this is provided by Spence (2000a). He has a single layer of spatial data showing a simplification of the administrative geography of London in the 1690s. Linking this to taxation data allows him to explore the social geography of London at the time. This is done by following themes such as household rents, business rents, household densities, distribution of households by gender, distribution of widows, and so on. Producing maps also allows possible explanations to be developed: for example, Spence finds high concentrations of widows in the City and to the east of London. He speculates that there may be different explanations for this in these two areas. In the wealthy City it may reflect the dominance of males as property holders in this area, even after the men concerned had died. In the less affluent east, however, he speculates that this may reflect the dangers of the types of employment available to men from this area.

Mooney follows a similar approach (Mooney 2000). He links spatial data consisting of Registration Districts in London in the late 19th century to data on admissions to various hospitals. He uses this information first to describe the patterns of admissions to London hospitals, and then to attempt to describe the spatial patterns of various diseases in the metropolis at that date. In the same volume, Galloway investigates London's national importance as an economic centre in the medieval period (Galloway 2000). This is done by producing dot maps of a variety of debt statistics from around 1400 to illustrate the economic interactions between London and the rest of England.

These three essays are all good examples of how basic mapping and thinking spatially can provide new insights into a discipline without the need for complex analyses.