Evidence of place in Late Roman sources

The Regnum Francorum Online (RFO) historical GIS does not exclusively concern the Merovingian and Carolingian Frankish kingdom, but also the Roman foundation on which the Early Medieval civilisations was built. To put some light on this, and describe the Late Roman empire, two layers are part of the GIS. Both layers are based on primary sources. The first layer is a compilation of Roman itineraries (e.g. Peutinger map, Itinerarium Antonini), description of the administrative and political order of the Late Roman empire (e.g. Notitia dignitatum), narrative sources and Roman places mentioned on the milestones. All together, there are 2190 evidence of place, distributed among 799 Roman places. The second layer contains all the milestones themselfes and their place of discovery. The milestone layer has 1039 entries distributed among 613 places of discovery. The layers cover the western half of the Roman empire north of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and extend into the Roman province Pannonia, modern Hungary. The latter layer is motivated by the importance of the Roman roads network, which is part of the background maps for the entire GIS. All the sources are listed at the end of this post, together with their availability in online digital libraries.


Figure 1: Places in Late Roman sources (red) and place of discovery of Roman milestones (blue) between the river Seine and Rhine, zoom level 7.

These sources have been georeferenced so when rendered on the map and receiving input by a mouse click, the source entries for the selected place will be listed in the output pane to the right. In the output pane a list of source entries for the selected place is displyed together with a citation from the source and links to digitized source editions. If the source edition is available on Google Books or the Internet Archive, you have the option to view the source inside the RFO application. Sources hosted in the Perseus digital library can also be viewed inside RFO, because they are available as XML-documents. The Peutinger database is serving small images of the map centered on the selected place, together with the transcription as part of the XML-output, see figure 2 below. The places currently on the visible part of the map can be listed by selecting the Places menu tab. Not all sources are fully complete (especially Ammianus Marcellinus and Ptolemy), but a vast majority of the places mentioned in the other sources should be in the database. As far as I know the milestones are fully complete within the area selected.


Figure 2: The entry of Augusta Treverorum (Trier, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany) on the Peutinger map embedded into the RFO application.

Both layers are listed in the Layers menu tab, in the section Layers based on primary sources : Thematic layers, in the RFO application. They can be loaded following the links below.
Places in Late Roman sources

Roman milestones, place of discovery

Sources
Itineraries, ancient geography

• Itinerarium Antonini, in: Itinerarium Antonini Augusti et Hierosolymitanum, Gustav Parthey and Moritz Pinder (eds.), Berlin 1848. Google Books: books.google.com/books?id=s0oMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1
  
• Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, in: Itinerarium Antonini Augusti et Hierosolymitanum, Gustav Parthey and Moritz Pinder (eds.), Berlin 1848. Google Books: books.google.com/books?id=s0oMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA261
  
• Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered, Richard J. A. Talbert, 2010. Online database: www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/prm.html
  
• Claudius Ptolemy Tetrabiblos, F. E. Robbins (ed.), Cambridge, Mass.; London. Perseus: www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0636
  
• Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia et Guidonis Geographica, Moritz Pinder and Gustav Parthey (eds.), Berlin 1860. Google Books: books.google.com/books?id=mlxRV1Gz1ZkC
  
• Notitia dignitatum omnium tam civilium quam militarium in partibus Occidentis. Seeck, Otto (ed.) 1876. Google Books-USA: books.google.com/books?id=kTmjFj4_FlkC. Internet Archive: www.archive.org/details/notitiadignitat00silvgoog
  
• Notitia Galliarum, in: Notitia dignitatum omnium tam civilium quam militarium in partibus Occidentis, Seeck, Otto (ed.) 1876. Google Books-USA: books.google.com/books?id=kTmjFj4_FlkC&pg=PA261. Internet Archive: www.archive.org/details/notitiadignitat00silvgoog
  

Narrative sources

• Rerum Gestarum, Ammianus Marcellinus [391]. Perseus: www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2007.01.0081
  

Milestones

• Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum III. Inscriptiones Asiae, provinciarum Europae Graecarum, Illyrici Latinae, Th. Mommsen, 1873. Clauss-Slaby Online database: www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html
  
• Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII, 1904. Clauss-Slaby Online database: www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html
  
• Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XVII, pars II. Miliaria provinciarum Narbonensis Galliarum Germaniarum, G. Walser (ed.) 1986. Clauss-Slaby Online database: www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html
  
• Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XVII, pars IV, fasc. I Miliaria provinciarum Raetiae et Norici, A. Kolb, G. Walser, G. Winkler (eds.) Clauss-Slaby Online database: www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html
  
• L'Année Épigraphique (periodical). Clauss-Slaby Online database: www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html
  

Compiling sources of Ancient history

In this post I will demonstrate what can be achieved regarding knowledge of Ancient history by compiling persistant identifiers of several external resources. The coordination of sources, and hence the advantage of having them displayed together, is accomplished through the use of a common geographical interface, where layers of one or more external sources could be displayed.


The Regnum Francorum user interface showing georeferenced articles of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Ancient Sites, with the embeded article of Augusta Treverorum (Trier) in the right pane.

The Regnum Francorum Online (RFO) historical GIS has recently been updated with a new user interface, built on Google Maps API 3.x. The GIS uses its own base tiles for zoom levels 6-10, made by the Mapnik software. These tiles are based on geographical data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and the SRTM elevation data from NASA. It also contains basic historic information of the Late Roman civitates and early bishoprics of Western Europe, established until the 9th century, borders of the Early medieval counties (pagi) and the Roman roads network. Further geographical details can be viewed through the use of a collateral secondary map, covering zoom levels above 10, that is, embedded maps from OpenStreetMap (OSM), Google Maps (streetmap, terrain and satellite), the 18th century Cassini map of France, and an experimental topographical map covering the Moselle and Rhine regions of France and Germany, combining data from OSM and SRTM. The aim of the historical GIS is to compile evidence of places, institutions and territories from both primary and secondary sources, and render them as layers on top of the basemap. If the source editions are available online, the GIS will provide links to, or embed these sources into the historical GIS.

Recently, I have introduced tags of identifiers from certain external sources, that contribute to the definition of a place. These tags refer to entries in online encyclopedias (Wikipedia and the Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites), topographical dictionaries (Toponymisch woordenboek) and gazetteers (Pleiades ancient places), as well as information from other geographical systems such as OpenstreetMap, Cartes IGN (France), and Google Satellite images. The tags regarding the latter, refer to manually selected archaeological features, whether or not archaeological remains are visible on satellite images (Google), or defined on the maps from IGN and OSM. In the case of Google and IGN, links are provided to embedded versions of these maps within RFO; in the case of OSM, an external link to the geometry entry at the OSM geographical database is displayed.

On the Sources menu tab in the Regnum Francorum Online application, there is a row of buttons that enables direct access to the layers described above. The layers showing georeferenced source editons and literature, the first two buttons, are not new, they have been components of the Regnum Francorum GIS for a long time. From inside the RFO application, one or more layers can be loaded simultaneously. Only the topmost layer is interactive, however, the order of layers can easily be altered fromthe Layers menu tab. These are the new layers:

Selected Wikipedia articles in English, French, German and Dutch with historical or archaeological content. Currently, 867 places have one or more Wikipedia article. Typically, the Wikipedia articles selected here refer to an ancient place known by name, or a major archaeological site. Load this layer by clicking this link.

Selected OSM geometries (point or polygon). Currently 450 places have one or more OSM geometry. Archaeological sites and remains are typically described by a point or a polygon outlining the site or ruin. Load this layer by clicking this link.

Archaeological remains visible on Google satellite images. Currently there are almost 200 sites in the database. The quality of the images vary. Clicking the provided link in the result pane will embed the Google satellite map at zoom level 16. Load this layer by clicking this link.

Archaeological remains defined on the Cartes IGN (France). Currently there are 107 sites in the database. Clicking the provided link in the result pane will open the topographic map of France in a new tab or window. Load this layer by clicking this link.

This layer contains all the articles of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (PECS) concerning ancient places and archaeological sites in modern Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, and a couple of places elsewhere, in all over 700 places. The Perseus digital library that hosts the encyclopedia outputs articles and source texts in both XML and HTML. This makes it possible to embed the article inside the RFO application, which is of course very convenient. Load this layer by clicking this link.

This layer contains links to a growing number of entries in the topographical dictionary of Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and adjacent provinces in France and Germany. I have selected places with evidence in sources no later than A.D. 950. The dictionary also contains places that are mentioned later during the Middle ages. This electronic resource from the University of Antwerpen is based on the Toponymisch woordenboek von België, Nederland, Luxemburg, Frankrijk en West-Duitsland (vóór 1226) by Maurits Gysseling, published in 1960. This particular area is of vital importance for the rise to power of the Arnulfing-Carolingian family in the the late 7th century. There are also many written evidence in Late-Roman sources for places in the provinces of Germania and Belgica covered by this dictionary – Trier, Augusta Treverorum, was once the capital of the Roman empire. So far, there are almost 550 places in the database with a link to the topographic dictionary. Load this layer by clicking this link.

A few examples


Below is the outcome of a click on a place called Heidetränk, located in Oberursel (Taunus) in Hesse, Germany, where there are extensive remains of a large Celtic oppidum. The image to the left is from the collateral map of the Moselle-Rhine region at zoom level 14. Normally, the archaeological sites in OSM display at zoom level 16 and above, but since this experimental map is intented to serve as a historial / archaeological basemap, their apperance is defined differently. The Heidetränk oppidum is defined in OSM by a series of polygons. Below are links to their entries in the OSM database. There are also links to articles in the German Wikipedia and the website Oppida : the first town north of the Alps, and a link to the Heidetränk entry in Pleiades Ancient Places gazetteer.

area: 130 ha; oppida=72; osm:way=137701370; osm:way=26535643; osm:way=27823337; osm:way=80406240; osm:way=89669777; osm:way=89671720; osm:way=89671727; osm:way=89671731; osm:way=89671773; pleiades:places=109038; wikipedia:de=Heidetränk-Oppidum


Below is the outcome of a click on a place called Mandeure, département Doubs, France, once a roman vicus, a small town with the remains of a theater. The image to the left is from the collateral Google satellite map at zoom level 18. The outline of the theater is defined in OSM by a polygon. There is also a link to an article in the Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites, which can be embedded in RFO, links to two articles in the French Wikipédia, a link to the Pleiades gazetteer, and finally a link to the embedded Google satellite image indicated by the satellite=yes link (this link is deactivated here).

geonames=2996251; osm:way=37846050; pecs=epamantadurum [embed]; pleiades:places=177516; satellite=yes; wikipedia:fr=Epomanduodurum; wikipedia:fr=Théâtre_antique_de_Mandeure

Following the link to OpenStreetMap where the polygon of the theater is defined, will display the following image, which is made up by 15 pair of coordinates.

Building an integrated historical geographical information system, part 1

Historical source-documents are increasingly becoming available on the Internet. It's a huge resource waiting to be elaborated. The sources often come in one of two formats. They are published as graphical scans of printed book pages with or without large chunks of unedited OCR-text, or they can be fully formatted as an electronic text, that can be copied, edited or searched. Often little or no metadata about the source documents are available. I will mention a couple of examples. Digital libraries such as Google Books or Gallica have huge amounts of scans of book-pages with OCR-text. A very rough estimation is that the accompanying OCR-text are correct to 60 percent. Searching for a term in the text will sometimes give a correct result, sometimes not. Maybe we can expect the OCR-technique to perform better in the future, I dont know. Otherwise we have to depend on humans taking responsibility for manual processing and correction of the texts. An example of the latter is the project Chartae Burgundiae Medii Aevi, University of Burgundy, in Dijon France, aiming at making all medieval charter editions of Burgundy available on the internet as fully corrected electronic texts, in part through own digitazation efforts, including publishing previously unedited texts from manuscripts online, correction of digitized text found at Gallica and Google Books. Currently there are 25 editions avialable, which are all downloadable in Text- or Word-format. Other examples of projects with high ambitions to publish fully corrected editions of historical source-documents are the digital Monumenta Germaniae historica (dMGH), Regesta Imperii (RI), and Codice diplomatico della Lombardia medievale (secoli VIII - XII).

It's important for scholarly work to have the possibility to cite/quote individual pages or source documents in editions. In order for electronical text to become part of the scientific research process they must fulfill these requirements. Currently there are a number of ways that these requirements are beginning to become fullfilled. The dMGH allows building of URL to indivudal pages through-out the entire body of all editions in Monumenta Germaniae historica, using widely known abbreviations to individual editions of source documents. The following example is an URL to a individual page in Gesta Dagoberti I. in: SS rer. Merov. 2. page 396 ("S." means "Seite", German for page).

http://www.mgh.de/dmgh/resolving/SS_rer._Merov._2_S._396

Next example demonstrates an URL built from widely used sequential number of royal diplomas in Die Urkunden der Karolinger 1 (Royal diplomas issued by king Pepin, Carloman and Charlemagne) The following two example refers to diploma no. 165, donation by Charlemagne to monastery Prüm (Rheinland-Pfalz) issued on the 9^th of June 790 in Mainz (Mayence). Note the slight different composition of the two URL retrieving the same document by charter-number and page-number respectively.

http://www.mgh.de/dmgh/diplomata/resolving/D_Kar._1_165
http://www.mgh.de/dmgh/resolving/DD_Kar._1_S._222

Regesta Imperii is a series of source-summaries (regesta) ordering all written testimonials of Frankish and German kings chronologically throughout the middle-ages, with references to evidene in source editions. The lastest contribution is the first volume of source summaries of Charles the Bald, king of West-Francia (840-877), Die Regesten Karls des Kahlen 840 (823) - 877, edited by Irmgard Fees and published 2007. Not only evidence in diplomas but also evidence of activities of rulers in narrative sources. Regesta Imperii is also important for the listing of diplomas and other evidence of emperor Louis the Pioux, because of the still missing edition of his diplomas in MGH (the draft of this editions was destroyed during WW2). The following source summary refers to Regesta Imperii no 1005, Royal donation issued by Louis the Pious issued on the 8^th of May 840 in Salz, concerning royal estates in modern Belgium.

http://regesten.regesta-imperii.de \ 
   /index.php?uri=0000-00-00_1_0_1_1_0_0_1005

Even in non scientific resources like Google Books it's possible to link to indivudal pages of the source-edition. In Google by page-number of the printed original. Charter issued by Haroin in Wissembourg in 742, Liber donationum, no. 1 on page 7. in: Traditiones possessionesque Wizenburgenses. Codices duo cum supplementis. Zeuss (ed.) Speyer 1842, where id is a distinct and peristant identifier of this source edition.

http://books.google.com/books?id=yLoGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA7

Unfortunatelly Gallica only permits link to the sequential number of the scanned pages, which is not compatible with the printed edition of the edition. If you wish to link to a certain page, you have the visit the actual webpage and copy the link. In other words, you can't construct the link with knowledge of the book-identifier alone, like Google.

My project Regnum Francorum Online aims at referencing historical events from the Merovingian and Carolingian period in time, space, and by agency, building a collection of meta-data about the events including links to indivudal source-documents if they are available online, taking advantage of the possibility to link to individual source-documents as described in the examples above. Referencing in time means that events are given a numerical estimation of time. In PHP the concept of Julian day count is implemented, and it's utilzed here. Referencing in space means geo-referencing places mentioned in the event to modern geographical concept of longitude and latitude as well as administrative affinity like country and province and other territorial divisions, distinctly identifying a placename. Referencing by agency means identififying individuals mentioned in the event as well-known historical persons, or if not possible, to individuals with a recognized name. Uncertainty in referencing must be taken into account.

Historical GIS and Semantic web

The historical GIS application Regnum Francorum Online references historical events in time, space and by agency and link the events to source documents and literature available online. In doing so, the application becomes a GIS-interface to a growing number of both primary and secondary sources online. This also includes the huge collection of articles in the Wikipedia. To me, it has become evident that the Wikipedia will become a major source to all kinds of knowledge in the future. Thus it is of great importance to closer examine how the Regnum Francorum Online can be closely integrated with the Wikipedia.

Each article in the Wikipedia has an unique tag, together with an ID, which is necessary to build a permanent link to the article, according to the instructions in the Wikipedia. However, I have never seen a reference to the Wikipedia, including this ID. Not even in the semantic web project DBpedia, which has extracted and coded articles and their content into XML/RDF, including geographic information of such features. The DBpedia project uses the same unique tags as Wikipedia, but has also collected the geographic features of the GeoNames project, which are identified with a unique numerical ID. This project also geo-reference articles in the Wikipedia. Lately, the Wikipedia project has collected alternative identifiers of populated places, the local administrative units, which in the European Union are basic units of official statistics. These units are municipalities (e.g. commune, Gemeinde). The tags of geographic features in Wikipedia and DBpedia are often just the offical name. Alternative tags are also allowed, using redirects to the main article. Taking all this into consideration, a named geographic place within EU can be uniquely identified with a commonly knowned combination of country-code, administrative-code and place-name, e.g. Mommenheim in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany (DE/07339037/Mommenheim), can be separated from Mommenheim in Alsace (FR/67301/Mommenheim). The tags in Wikipedia are Mommenheim (Germany) and Mommenheim,_Bas-Rhin (France) respectively. It is in this context of inter-linked resources between Wikipedia, GeoNames, DBpedia, and national agencies of statistics, both in HTML and XML/RDF format, I would like to make the geographic features of Regnum Francorum Online inter-linked as well, maintaining the administrative code and the Wikipedia-tags of geographical features. In almost all cases, an article about the history of a city can be found in the city article itself. There are a few exceptions, but in these cases the city article refers to the separate history-article, e.g article about Lendorf in Austria referring to a separate article about the roman municipium Teurnia.

In both Regnum Francorum Online and Wikipedia/DBpedia there are other geographic features as well, that is, institutions of the state/kingdom, latin regnum, county pagus/comitatus, march marchae, duchy ducatum; and church: bishopric, latin episcopatum and monastery, monasterium. The tags identifying these institutions in the Wikipedia are not as consistent and predictable compared to populated places. The articles about bishoprics are reflecting the current division of the catholic church, differing between ancient and current dioceses, e.g there is an article about Roman_Catholic_Diocese_of_Passau and another one about Prince-Bishopric_of_Augsburg, both containing historical information about the bishoprics respectively. In Regnum Francorum Online this is implemented as bishopsric/Augsburg and bishopric/Passau respectively. Furthermore, articles about the history of monasteries are referred to as the placename with the suffix _Abbey, e.g. Lorsch_Abbey, corresponding to monastery/Lorsch in Regnum Francorum.

When it comes to territorial subdivisions (institutions) of the kingdom, the confusion in Wikipedia becomes bigger. From a history of early medieval Europe perspective it would have been desirable with tags describing traditional divisions of provinces and kingdoms, and maybe that will come in the future. In the English Wikipedia there is a short listing of Carolingian counties containing 7 entries. This category more or less corresponds to the listing of Gau pagus in the German Wikipedia, containing 147 entries of Gau/Gaugrafschaft situated mainly in modern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. For modern France there is a corresponding category Liste historique des comtés français, in English, list of the historical french counties, referring to different articles like lists of counts, or to a historical region. Obviously these categories are still under development.

In Wikipedia there is also categories of historical events (battles, treaties) that are exiting to take a closer look at. Articles of such events are often well-written and with substantial content, e.g. Battle of Poitiers 732. In the category Battles involving the Franks there are currently 30 entries. Unfortunately, the implementation of events in Regnum Francorum are somewhat ambiguous at the moment, suffering from the original implementation as historical documents, rather than events. Later it became evident to me that a historical source-document can contain information about several events distinct from each other in time, space and/or by agency. Consequently source-information about the battle of Poitiers can be retrieved from the database in terms of place and time, not from searching a record of the battle of Poitiers directly.

Well, to summarize, in order to inter-link Regnum Francorum with other significant websites like Wikipedia and GeoNames, common identifiers of place and institution must be maintained. This is also the first step to a full integration into the future semantic web.

Regnum Francorum Online historical GIS

Regnum Francorum Online — interactive maps and sources of early medieval Europe 614-840 is a historical geographic information system (GIS), aiming at referencing historical events of Merovingian and Carolingian Europe (Frankish kingdom) in time and space. The information system covers the time period approx. 614 to 840. Historical events are recognized through source-documents of different kind, mainly contemporary charter documents or copies of such documents, but also archeological evidence like coins. Meta-data about the events has been collected, including time and geographical locations of the events, type of event (donation, privilege, assembly, battle, siege etc.), actors involved in the event (historical persons like Charlemagne, or persons or groups identified by name) and links to source-documents available online. The information system is implemented as an online database-application running on a Apache-server, using MySQL with spatial extensions, PHP server-script and AJAX, producing interactive maps and inter-related output of historical and geographical information. Over the last years, a growing number of editions of primary sources have become available online in digital libraries such as Google Books, Gallica, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (dMGH), and Regesta Imperii, just to mention the largest collections. The main purpose of this information system is to provide an interactive geographical interface for the visualisation of the events and their historical context, connecting them to freely available online resources like full-text source documents and literature, but also other sources like medieval manuscripts, coins and maps.

I intend to use this blog to elaborate and discuss conceptual, methodological and technical issues regarding the development of Regnum Francorum Online. I have written my own PHP-class to draw the maps from coordinates stored in MySQL database-tables. The maps are currently drawn using the Universal Transverse Mercator - projection. There are a number of map-layers collected and compiled from various sources including own digitization of printed maps. In parallel to my own maps, basemaps from the Google Maps - service are also used to visualize layers with historical information. The blog will also be used to report on digitization of historical (medieval) sources, semantic web, historical GIS and online mapping in general (Google Maps API, Google Earth, Openlayers). Questions and comments are most welcome.