Approach
What counts as evidence, where interpretation enters, and how a reader can follow or contest a spatial claim.
A source may name a place without locating it precisely. A map may draw a district without agreeing with another map from the same decade. The platform records those differences before it tries to connect them.
The source term and its historical usage are recorded as written. It is not replaced by a present state label.
Named places are matched to gazetteer records; unresolved or region-level references remain unresolved or regional.
The claim may be viewed through the source’s geography, a dated administrative system, and present reference geography. These are parallel readings, not aliases.
The map shows the claim with its citation and labels any modern or geometric reading as derived.
- EvidenceEvery claim originates in a document.
Travel accounts, administrative records, geographic dictionaries, and scholarly secondary sources. The platform does not manufacture coordinates.
- SourceRecord what the document states.
Names, dates, affiliations, and silences are captured before normalization or interpretation.
- TimeRecord the precision the source gives.
“The eighteenth century” and “September 1742” are held as different degrees of temporal specificity, not flattened to a single point.
- GeometryMatch the geometry to the claim.
Point locations, regional descriptions, and route segments carry different geometric representations rather than a single uniform marker.
- ReferenceKeep gazetteers and polity systems separate from source claims.
Reference data helps compare records; it does not become the source’s own geography.
- DerivationName every step beyond the evidence.
Coordinate matches, boundary assignments, and present-day comparisons are documented and reversible.
- ConflictPreserve disagreement.
Competing attestations and overlapping boundaries remain available side by side.
- AbsenceDo not treat every gap as unfinished data.
Some gaps mark current collection limits; others reproduce archival destruction, exclusion, or a source’s own silence.
The archive and interface also frame what can be seen
Framing enters through source vocabulary, archival arrangement, transcription, gazetteer matching, polity assignment, temporal grouping, and interface design. The platform exposes these mediations rather than claiming to stand outside them.
Uncertainty is not a visual effect. It is a record of where evidence ends, where interpretation begins, and where frames disagree.
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