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[http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/hestia/ HESTIA: the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive]
==Available==
 
* http://hestia.open.ac.uk/
 
==Authors==
 
* [http://www.open.ac.uk/people/eteb2 Elton Barker], Classical Studies, The Open University
* [http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/Stefan.bouzarovski/ Stefan Bouzarovski], Geography, The University of Manchester
* [http://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/christopherpelling.html Chris Pelling], Classics, Christ Church, Oxford
* [http://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/about/staff/li103.page Leif Isaksen], Archaeological Computing, The University of Southampton
 
==Description==
 
'''Hestia''': The home for the spatial analysis of Herodotus’s ''Histories''
 
Sometime in the middle of the fifth-century BC, Herodotus, a Greek living on the coast of Asia Minor in a town called Halicarnassus (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) set out to explain the origins of the Great War that had taken place a generation before between his peoples, the Greeks, and the Persians. The result is his ''Histories'', in which he explores the world of his time, the conflicts that had given rise to it, the noteworthy deeds of various kinds of people in it, and the towns and cities that had risen and fallen throughout it, using the new medium of his age—writing—to represent the world around him.
 
The [http://hestia.open.ac.uk/ Hestia Project] takes up Herodotus’s enquiry through the new medium of our time—digital technology. Phase 1 involved a collaborative team of researchers from Classical Studies, Geography and Digital Humanities. Using a digital text of Herodotus’s Histories, from which we extracted all place-names, we used web-mapping technologies such as GIS, Google Earth and Narrative TimeMap to investigate the cultural geography of the ancient world through the eyes of one of its first witnesses. Our aims were twofold. First, we try to disrupt traditional cartographic ideas of geographic spaces as points on a map, by using the digital medium to read text and space alongside each other, thereby allowing a sense of space as something lived and experienced to emerge. In particular, we construct network maps of the relations between places in Herodotus in ways that challenge the schematic division of the world as a clash between East and West, between Asia and Europe. Second, we seek to enable users of different expertise and interests—researchers, students and general enthusiasts—to use our technologies for themselves.
 
Hestia phase 2 took this experimental approach to analysing the geography of a written text and: (1) explored 4 key issues regarding big data in the humanities; and (2) consolidated the technological development in an innovative suite of tools for reading Herodotus’s Histories.
 
 
'''''1. Big data in the humanities: four key issues'''''
With the digital medium rapidly transforming the ways in which information is viewed and processed, data visualisation is one of the key challenges to academic and non-academic groups alike. Cultural heritage groups, government agencies and firms working in the digital economy, all have to deal with the problem of presenting big data in ways that make sense to their users but that do not reduce the complexity of the data or give a misleading picture. Hestia2 uses the key intellectual outcome of the original project—the analysis of spatial relations embedded in literary texts—to discuss humanistic approaches to data visualisation which, by virtue of being based on real content that is complex and messy, can help contribute to this debate. In a four-part seminar series, Hestia2 considers:
* network analysis techniques, methods and models used for data exploration – hosted by the Archaeological Computing Research Group, Southampton;
* digital visualisations of data, especially complex literary texts – hosted by the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis;
* the role of GIS in mapping texts – hosted by the Department of Geography, Birmingham;
* the extent to which digital technologies help non-academics access and comprehend research – hosted by the Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University.
Recordings of the presentations can be found on our [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-wupYMc_xZkTn_Czy34BJQ youtube channel], while [http://hestia.open.ac.uk/blog/ our blog] features posts that go into more detail about some of these different topics.
 
 
'''''2. Consolidating the technology: HestiaVis and the OpenLearn Herodotus'''''
To promote wider engagement among researchers, students and general enthusiasts with the original project’s re-imagining of the geography of Herodotus’s Histories, Hestia2 consolidates its technological innovations in two ways.
 
First, building on a post-Hestia project called Google Ancient Places (itself inspired by Hestia), we have developed an intuitive user interface for reading text and maps alongside each other. This platform, called [http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/hestia/index.html#index HestiaVis], allows users to explore the Histories in different ways. A Summary View gives you a big-picture perspective on what places occur in the book as a whole and where they appear in the narrative structure, so that you can grasp the total distribution of place references at a glance. The Reading View offers an interface for reading the text, including a narrative timeline and a map of recently-referenced places, so that you can move through the narrative and see locations appearing and ‘fading from memory’. The Place Detail view provides deeper information about a particular geographic location, including network maps of related places based on their reference together in the narrative (i.e. their textual, not geographic, proximity) and links out to data provided by other projects, so that you can find out more about the places you are interested in from other online resources.
 
Second, we have worked with The Open University’s OpenLearn Unit to produce free and open educational resources that make use of our technologies. Why not try out [http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/classical-studies/herodotus-the-histories OpenLearn Herodotus] for yourselves and take up the challenge of Herodotus’s Histories to go and pursue your own enquiry.
 
* Hestia phase 1 was funded by an Early Career Grant from the AHRC (2008-2010)
* Hestia phase 2 was supported by the AHRC's Follow-on Funding scheme (2013-2014)
* Follow us on Twitter: @Hestiaproject
 
 
==Publications==
* Barker, E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2010): [https://www.academia.edu/227209/Mapping_an_ancient_historian_in_a_digital_age_the_Herodotus_Encoded_Space-Text-Image_Archive_HESTIA_ Mapping an ancient historian in a digital age: the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Image Archive (HESTIA)]. Leeds International Classical Journal (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/lics/).
* Barker, E., Isaksen, L, Rabinowitz, N., Bouzarovski, S. and Pelling, C. (2013): [https://www.academia.edu/5465329/On_using_digital_resources_for_the_study_of_an_ancient_text_the_case_of_Herodotus_Histories On using a digital text in modern humanities research: the case of Herodotus’ Histories]. In: S. Dunn and S. Mahony (eds.), Digital Classicist Supplement: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Oxford, 45-62.
* Barker, E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2013a): ‘Extracting, investigating and representing geographical concepts in Herodotus: the case of the Black Sea’. In: G. Tsetskhladze et al. (eds.), The Bosporus: Gateway between the Ancient West and East. Oxford, 7-17.
* Barker, E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2013b): [https://www.academia.edu/5773064/Writing_space_living_space_time_agency_and_place_relations_in_Herodotus_s_Histories Writing space, living space: time, agency and place relations in Herodotus’s Histories]. In: J. Heirman and J. Klooster (eds.), The Ideologies of Lived Space: Ancient and Modern. Leiden, 229-247.
* '''Barker, E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (eds.) (2016): [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/new-worlds-from-old-texts-9780199664139?cc=us&lang=en& New Worlds out of Old Texts: Revisiting Ancient Space and Place]. Oxford.'''
** Barker E., Bouzarovski, S. & Isaksen, L. (2016): Creating new worlds out of old texts. In Barker, et al. Oxford, 1-21.
** Bouzarovski, S. and Barker, E. (2016): Between east and west: movements and transformations in Herodotean topology. In: Barker et al. Oxford, 155-179.
** Barker, E., Isaksen, L. and Ogden, J. (2016): Telling stories with maps: digital experiments with Herodotean geography. In: Barker et al. Oxford, 181-224.
** Barker, E. and Pelling, C. (2016): Space-Travelling in Herodotus 5. In: Barker et al. Oxford, 225-252.
** Pelling, C. (2016): A view from the boundary. In: Barker et al. Oxford, 319-336.
 
 
'''''Other Publications'''''
* Barker, E, Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2010): Herodotus Earth: mapping and networking the Histories. Iris (http://www.irismagazine.org/). [Popular publication]
* Barker, E, Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2011): HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive): an interdisciplinary project. In Research Infrastructure in the Digital Humanities: Science Policy Briefing of the European Science Foundation 2011.
 
 
==Acknowledgements==
Hestia was funded through an Early Career Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2008-2010
 
Hestia 2 was funded by the AHRC's follow-on funding scheme, 2013-2014


[[category:projects]]


Editor [http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/User:LeifIsaksen Leif Isaksen]
Editors: [http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/classical-studies/barker.shtml Elton Barker] and Leif Isaksen


HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) employs the latest digital technology to develop an innovative methodology to the study of spatial data in Herodotus’ Histories. Using a digital text of Herodotus, freely available from the Perseus on-line library, to capture all the place-names mentioned in the narrative, we construct a database to house that information and represent it in a series of mapping applications, such as GIS, GoogleEarth and GoogleMap Timeline. As a collaboration of academics from the disciplines of Classics, Geography, and Archaeological Computing, HESTIA has the twin aim of investigating the ways geography is represented in the Histories and of bringing Herodotus’ world into people’s homes.
[[category:projects]]
[[category:geography]]
[[category:blogs]]
[[category:LAWDI]]
[[category:Linked open data]]
[[category:Openaccess]]
[[category:Projects]]
[[category:networks]]
[[category:Time]]

Latest revision as of 17:50, 4 March 2019

Available

Authors

Description

Hestia: The home for the spatial analysis of Herodotus’s Histories

Sometime in the middle of the fifth-century BC, Herodotus, a Greek living on the coast of Asia Minor in a town called Halicarnassus (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) set out to explain the origins of the Great War that had taken place a generation before between his peoples, the Greeks, and the Persians. The result is his Histories, in which he explores the world of his time, the conflicts that had given rise to it, the noteworthy deeds of various kinds of people in it, and the towns and cities that had risen and fallen throughout it, using the new medium of his age—writing—to represent the world around him.

The Hestia Project takes up Herodotus’s enquiry through the new medium of our time—digital technology. Phase 1 involved a collaborative team of researchers from Classical Studies, Geography and Digital Humanities. Using a digital text of Herodotus’s Histories, from which we extracted all place-names, we used web-mapping technologies such as GIS, Google Earth and Narrative TimeMap to investigate the cultural geography of the ancient world through the eyes of one of its first witnesses. Our aims were twofold. First, we try to disrupt traditional cartographic ideas of geographic spaces as points on a map, by using the digital medium to read text and space alongside each other, thereby allowing a sense of space as something lived and experienced to emerge. In particular, we construct network maps of the relations between places in Herodotus in ways that challenge the schematic division of the world as a clash between East and West, between Asia and Europe. Second, we seek to enable users of different expertise and interests—researchers, students and general enthusiasts—to use our technologies for themselves.

Hestia phase 2 took this experimental approach to analysing the geography of a written text and: (1) explored 4 key issues regarding big data in the humanities; and (2) consolidated the technological development in an innovative suite of tools for reading Herodotus’s Histories.


1. Big data in the humanities: four key issues With the digital medium rapidly transforming the ways in which information is viewed and processed, data visualisation is one of the key challenges to academic and non-academic groups alike. Cultural heritage groups, government agencies and firms working in the digital economy, all have to deal with the problem of presenting big data in ways that make sense to their users but that do not reduce the complexity of the data or give a misleading picture. Hestia2 uses the key intellectual outcome of the original project—the analysis of spatial relations embedded in literary texts—to discuss humanistic approaches to data visualisation which, by virtue of being based on real content that is complex and messy, can help contribute to this debate. In a four-part seminar series, Hestia2 considers:

  • network analysis techniques, methods and models used for data exploration – hosted by the Archaeological Computing Research Group, Southampton;
  • digital visualisations of data, especially complex literary texts – hosted by the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis;
  • the role of GIS in mapping texts – hosted by the Department of Geography, Birmingham;
  • the extent to which digital technologies help non-academics access and comprehend research – hosted by the Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University.

Recordings of the presentations can be found on our youtube channel, while our blog features posts that go into more detail about some of these different topics.


2. Consolidating the technology: HestiaVis and the OpenLearn Herodotus To promote wider engagement among researchers, students and general enthusiasts with the original project’s re-imagining of the geography of Herodotus’s Histories, Hestia2 consolidates its technological innovations in two ways.

First, building on a post-Hestia project called Google Ancient Places (itself inspired by Hestia), we have developed an intuitive user interface for reading text and maps alongside each other. This platform, called HestiaVis, allows users to explore the Histories in different ways. A Summary View gives you a big-picture perspective on what places occur in the book as a whole and where they appear in the narrative structure, so that you can grasp the total distribution of place references at a glance. The Reading View offers an interface for reading the text, including a narrative timeline and a map of recently-referenced places, so that you can move through the narrative and see locations appearing and ‘fading from memory’. The Place Detail view provides deeper information about a particular geographic location, including network maps of related places based on their reference together in the narrative (i.e. their textual, not geographic, proximity) and links out to data provided by other projects, so that you can find out more about the places you are interested in from other online resources.

Second, we have worked with The Open University’s OpenLearn Unit to produce free and open educational resources that make use of our technologies. Why not try out OpenLearn Herodotus for yourselves and take up the challenge of Herodotus’s Histories to go and pursue your own enquiry.

  • Hestia phase 1 was funded by an Early Career Grant from the AHRC (2008-2010)
  • Hestia phase 2 was supported by the AHRC's Follow-on Funding scheme (2013-2014)
  • Follow us on Twitter: @Hestiaproject


Publications


Other Publications

  • Barker, E, Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2010): Herodotus Earth: mapping and networking the Histories. Iris (http://www.irismagazine.org/). [Popular publication]
  • Barker, E, Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (2011): HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive): an interdisciplinary project. In Research Infrastructure in the Digital Humanities: Science Policy Briefing of the European Science Foundation 2011.


Acknowledgements

Hestia was funded through an Early Career Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2008-2010

Hestia 2 was funded by the AHRC's follow-on funding scheme, 2013-2014


Editors: Elton Barker and Leif Isaksen