In Kelly Knowles article GIS and History she talks about the relationship and differences between geographers and historians, about the misuse of images by historians, and that GIS will change history as a discipline – although it is being under used at the moment.
She states that historical GIS has 4 major characteristics, the last of which is that historical arguments are presented in maps. History is not dissociated from the map, but in the end it is an image we use to enforce our thinking, not an image to reflect our analysis.
The fact is that history and geography are two very different disciplines. Historian learn a different set of traits, then geographers, just like we do not learn the same skills as a chemist. My use of the pippet is wanting but that does not seem to effect my ability to examine a source about the history of the pippet.The same goes with maps, I am not a cartographer – I have none of the skills needed – yet I have no problem reading a map, seeing the bias in it, manipulating them, and using them to further my understanding of an event. Geography should inform us, give us perspective but it should not be the bases or underlining in our thinking about history whether we use GIS or not.
Knowles statement that we are not using GIS to it fullest capacity is fully justified. Yet when I examined her examples they were interesting but I felt that there could be more done. They are a manipulation of a map, with data plotted onto it. Historian are more then plotters of data, what use it is if we plot the fountains, city gates and the Tiber river in the Nolli map project if we do not use the information presented to come to some kind of understanding.
GIS is an amazing thing for historians, it can allow to see the population boom in the prairie, to reconstruct landscapes, show divides within a community, or to show us distances between fountains in Ancient Rome. But it can not do our thinking for us. They are still images we create, boundaries that we set. Bias that we enforce. They are a tool to help us in the telling of history, not the end of the story.