Mapping Past Societies (MAPS): Data Science meets the Human Past

Join Professors Henry Gruber (History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Michael McCormick (History, Harvard University), Alexander More (School for the Environment, UMass Boston), and MAPS Managing Editor Santiago Pardo Sánchez (College ’16, Senior Resident Tutor at Harvard’s Adams House), and the remarkable undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral researchers at Harvard who are using data science to breathe new life into the digital humanities about our past, as we inaugurate a new release in the undergraduate-driven digital atlas:

MAPPING PAST SOCIETIES (formerly Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations), a project of the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP).

Mapping Past Societies (MAPS) replaces and expands the acclaimed Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (DARMC) which attracted more than a million visits a year. MAPS is a free and public tool that enables users to peer into the human past with cutting-edge data analytics: this includes geospatial coverage of historical societies in Afro-Eurasia, North Africa and the overseas Spanish Colonial Latin America, with a rich selection of data in health, environmental, economic, and social themes. 

A great opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in joining the MAPS team to create new geodatabases or use this tool for their own research!

This special event will feature lightning talks by Harvard researchers (undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs and faculty), followed by comments by Prof. Jason Ur, Stephen Phillips Professor of Archaeology and Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. We look forward to welcoming you to this stimulating interdisciplinary event, revealing innovations in global history and history-making – at the cutting edge!  And please join us for the reception to follow!

Public reception to follow at Adams House, Oaktel Room 217 (at the Inn), 1201 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Link for webinar registration for remote attendees: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uxdH2HpmRdarAmUnTiLh-g

This event is co-sponsored by The Standing Committee on Medieval Studies, Harvard University