Using the Cultural Atlas

  • Goal: The Cultural Atlas is designed to be a tool for visualizing and analyzing historical and cultural phenomena. With the capacity to create customized maps based on a theme, era and region of interest, you can quickly answer--or at least frame--questions that would once have taken a lifetime. What religions had pilgrimage sites along the Silk Road? Was there much regional variation in mortality in nineteenth century Britain? The Cultural Atlas can be used for research, teaching, advocacy, and resource discovery.
  • Users: The Cultural Atlas is still under development and the users who will find it most interesting and useful are scholars who are working with cultural data that has a time and space component. Interfaces to ECAI for educators and other researchers will be developed in a collaborative process. Please see information on education and pedagogy.
  • Browsing: The first step in using the Cultural Atlas is to browse the metadata clearinghouse to discover resources that are of interest to you. The clearinghouse is online, and does not require special software. It is a catalogue of projects with links to URLs.
  • Making Maps: If you are interested in using the Cultural Atlas to make maps, you must first download the TimeMap™ GIS viewer. Once that is running, you may visit the metadata clearinghouse to begin searching ECAI resources.
  • Under construction: Please remember that ECAI is still under development. If you have difficulty downloading TimeMap™ or you do not find the resources you are looking for, you are welcome to contact us.