Day 1

Day 1 of the GIS experience at the grand institution of Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College:

I am currently daydreaming about mapping various things. This is my most prominent GIS research daydream:

When I was a history student at Swarthmore College, I discovered a book called "The De Soto Chronicles", which is a compilation of all the primary source writings on the exploration of Hernando De Soto through the southeastern United States, translated into English. As a resident of Western North Carolina, this matters to me because it is thought to be the first written documentation of Western North Carolina. As an amateur historian, I am fascinated by this text and have read it many times. It is incredibly geographical. And different scholars have produced various different estimations of the path that De Soto and company traveled. But think of what historians could do if they were using GIS software. Not only could they have layers of ecological landmarks -- the contours of the land, the locations of rivers, but someone could also take current knowledge of archaeological sites from the period and add these to the picture, allowing for a more nuanced picture of the world De Soto traveled through and perhaps the ability to link the towns he passed through to really existing archaeological sites of towns. Since GIS allows one to attach notes to certain places, tons of useful information could be embedded in this map. Think of the historical analysis it would allow one to do.

Now I just need to find someone to pay me to do that research. :)