Digital Cartography and the Greek Lands
Inaugural event of the Seminar
Simon Hasdenteufel École française d’Athènes
Mapping the Latin Domination in Greece. Cartographic Experimentations and Methodological Issues
The Latin domination in Greece has been studied through various perspectives. However, scholarships have often left aside the territorial aspect of this Latin rule. As a consequence, there are only a few maps proposing a cartographic view of such a political phenomenon. The presentation will consider the cartographic approaches for a better understanding of the Latin period in Greece. It will focus mainly on the so-called “Latin Empire of Constantinople” (1204-1261), centered on the Byzantine capital, and on the Latin Principality of Morea, in the Peloponnese. This contribution will also address the methodology of mapping, showing its heuristic potential and its limits – maps being only a partial and selected representation of reality.
Simon Hasdenteufel is a member of the École française d’Athènes. He holds a PhD in Medieval history from Sorbonne Université and graduated with the agrégation d’histoire. His research focuses on the Latin aristocracy in Greece from the 13th to 15th century, with a special interest on social interactions, political ideology and processes of territorial appropriations.
Eleni Gkadolou British School at Athens
Digital Reconstruction of the Work of the French Scientific Mission – Expédition de Morée
The French Scientific Mission, known as the Expédition de Morée, arrived in Greece in 1828 to map the territories and record the available resources of the Hellenic State, which was about to be established following the Greek War of Independence of 1821. The results of this work were published between 1831 and 1838 in eight extensive volumes, accompanied by an atlas containing detailed reports, narratives, topographic depictions, tables, and illustrations. The topographical surveys conducted by the Mission resulted in the Map of the Peloponnese, composed of six sheets at a scale of 1:200.000, published in 1832 (and included in the Atlas), as well as the final Carte de la Grèce, which covered the entire territory of the new state—Peloponnese, Cyclades, Attica, Euboea, and Central Greece. This map was published in 1852 at the same scale (1:200.000) in twenty sheets by the French Dépôt de la Guerre. This corpus represents the first official survey of Greece based on scientific measurements, marking the beginning of the era of “scientific cartography” in the country and setting a significant milestone. Within the framework of three postdoctoral research projects conducted at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, this extensive body of work produced by the French Mission was studied in order to extract the geographical information it contained and to digitally reconstruct the historical landscape of that period. An equally important aspect that naturally emerged was the exploration of how meaning could be ascribed to the geographical data derived from the Mission’s archive, and conversely, how the archive itself could be spatially interpreted and brought back to life. Different methodologies and tools were employed—FAIR principles, linked data, annotation, deep mapping, and storytelling, among others—resulting in the development of an extensive geo-gazetteer and spatial database containing over 20.000 places, available to the public in the form of a new digital atlas, which reconstructs the successive layers of the historical maps, allowing for their enrichment with narrations and visual material produced by the very protagonists of that era.
Eleni Gkadolou is the Digital Asset Manager at the British School at Athens and a Senior Researcher in Digital Humanities. Her research interests focus on semantics for cultural heritage and historical studies. She holds a PhD and an MSc from the Department of Geography at Harokopio University of Athens, as well as a Diploma in Rural and Surveying Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens.
Michael Festas National Hellenic Research Foundation
From Written Historical Sources to the Digital Map: Reflections on the Study of Settlements in the Peloponnese during the Greek Revolution
The presentation discusses a series of reflections that emerged in the course of my doctoral research, “The Settlements of the Peloponnese during the Greek Revolution: Space, Population, and Habitation”. The research involved the identification and cartographic mapping of approximately 1,800 toponyms drawn from the main historical sources: the statistical surveys conducted by the Kapodistrian administration and the material published by the French Scientific Expedition to the Morea (1828–1830), complemented by additional written and spatial data. The process of mapping the toponyms and settlements proved particularly complex, reflecting both the limitations of the historical sources and the challenges of representing them within a modern digital cartographic environment. The presentation will address issues related to the organization of historical data within a database structure and, more specifically, the methodological and interpretative challenges of mapping settlements that have since been deserted. Finally, it will explore whether the experience gained through this project can provide the development of a research methodology applicable to other regions and historical periods.
Michael Festas holds a PhD from the Department of History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His doctoral research examined settlements in the Peloponnese during the Greek Revolution, with an emphasis on space, population, and habitation. His research interests focus on population history, settlement patterns, and the historical geography of Greece from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.