GIS在历史及文化地理学研究中的应用——国外研究进展综述

THE APPLICATION OF GIS TO THE STUDY ON HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY—— Commentary on the Research Progress abroad

通过对国外文献的分析,总结了GIS应用于历史地理学、文化地理学、考古和文化资源管理方面的研究进展,介绍了国外主要的历史文化地理信息系统的建设实践。从中看出,GIS已经应用在历史地理学和文化地理学的很多层面上,正日益成为国外社会科学研究发展的一个新趋势。文章总结国外该领域发展的情况,结合国内研究的实际,认为国内的历史、文化地理研究中GIS应用拥有巨大的发展潜力。为此,国内历史和文化地理学者应该重新认识GIS的作用,开发适合的GIS应用软件,搭建跨学科的合作研究平台,积极争取将GIS在历史文化研究中的应用纳入到数字城市计划之中。

By comprehensive analysis on overseas theses and literatures, the article summarizes the research progress of the application of GIS to historical and cultural geography, archaeology and cultural resources management. The article firstly searches key words ＂GIS＂ in some representative international academic periodicals, such as Historical Methods, History and Computing, Social Science History, and such like. The result shows that GIS has been becoming an important research way and instrument in historical and cultural geography. Known as historical GIS, the past few years have seen a rapid rise in interest in the potential use of GIS. Its evolution can be reflected in many ways, including the publication of books, special editions of journals, numerous conference sessions and presentations on historical GIS in annual conferences of SSHA and AAG. The research on cultural geography is currently combined with historical geography, and incarnated in some aspects of print culture, geographical names and language culture, especially religious culture. Archaeology has always had a focus on the spatial dimension of human behavior, aiming to interpret human behavior and material culture in a geographic context. Then, the paper introduces some main overseas practices of developing historical cultural GIS. It holds that GIS has been applied in many fields of historical geography and cultural geography. Based on the above reviewing, finally, the authors think that scholars should recognize the function of GIS,develop GIS software,build cooperative research platform from different disciplines and areas,and make using GIS for study of history and culture become a part of plan of digital city.