Links to sites and resources on the use of GIS, cartography and geography in history and historical research.

Ancient World Mapping Center
The Ancient World Mapping Center promotes cartography, historical geography and geographic information science as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies through innovative and collaborative research, teaching, and community outreach activities.

GIS for History
Web site with lesson plans for teachers and project ideas for students on how to use historical census data and GIS to understand the history of the United States. The student level is aimed toward high school students and undergraduates.

Mapping Medieval Townscapes: A Digital Atlas of the New Towns of Edward I
In the waning decades of the 13th century, King Edward I was concerned with several things in his kingdom. While England was growing more prosperous, he was also concerned about the rising trend towards urbanization and about the Welsh. In an effort to deal with both situations, Edward proposed the creation of a group of new town in both Wales and other parts of the kingdom. Out of this desire to maintain social and political order arose such places as Conwy, Newborough, Rhuddlan, and Aberystwyth. Seven hundred years later, a group of researchers from Queens University Belfast, working with funds from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, created this digital atlas of those towns. Drawing on the work of archaeologists, GIS experts, and other specialists, this atlas contains copious information on each locale. Visitors can look through each interactive map, and toggle various data layers, such as town walls, trenches, streets, and so on. Along with these maps, visitors can also read about how each map was created, and download the data sets used to generate each map.

Spatial History Project
Located at Stanford University, the Spatial History Project seeks to bring “together scholars working on projects at the intersection of geography and history using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in their research.”  The projects listed marry geospatial technologies with historical research.  Use the Google Earth to journey along with Alfred A. Hart, who between 1864 to 1869,took 364 pictures along the line of the Central Pacific Railroad.  Click on the photos along the trail route to see both historical and modern day photos of sites he photographed.  Or view a dynamic timeline of botany samples as they were collected across California between 1848 and 2008.

Visualizing Urban History Using GIS
Case study presented at the ESRI User Conference that uses GIS to study changes in Austin Texas over time.