Concurring Conceptions of the Yellow River Source in Traditional Chinese Cartography
Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
Conference Presentation

The Southern Song (1127-1279) maps of the Yugong (“Yu’s [System] of Tribute”, ca. 5th-3rd centuries BC) are the earliest extant maps of landmarks found in this eminent ancient Chinese terrestrial description. The maps show striking diversity in representation of the Yellow River source. Only some retain the delineation of the Yellow River in the Yugong – beginning from Jishi Mountain. The majority of maps claiming to illustrate the Yugong place the source of the Yellow River at the mythical Kunlun Mountain, as described in a series of Chinese sources. Some maps take into consideration the results of exploring the Yellow River sources, as presented the Hanshu (“History of the [Former] Han dynasty, 206 BC – 8 AD)” by Ban Gu AD 32-92)where an attempt is made to find a compromise between real topography and the authority of the Yugong. Finally, in some cases, the Yellow River source is not marked by any specific landmark.

This diversity can only be comprehended within a broad textual tradition. Conclusions: 1) The real source of the Yellow River is much less important than its concurring “conceptual” sources – Jishi and Kunlun. 2) The Yugong lost its role as the officially recognized account of true locations after the collapse of the Han Empire. 3) The interest in the Yugong under the Southern Song dynasty reflects the new political and ideological importance of the Yellow River basin due to its invasion by “barbarians.” The maps were aimed to affirm imperial control over the lost territories.

Verbal Itinerary Map - The Way From Japanese Islands To The Continent
Ekaterina Simonova-Gudzenko, Moscow State University, Russia
Conference Presentation

Since earliest times men were aware of their surroundings. While expanding new territories through conquest or travel men documented  roads to new regions and countries. In many cultures the description of the way turned out to be of great vitality as a form of spatial interpretation. For the culture developing on an archipelago the description of the sea road to the continent had a special value.

Caravan Roads and Connected Buildings: A Digital Geographical-historical Information Base
Pierre Lebigre and Evangelos Thomopoulos, Ecole d'Architecture Paris Val de Seine, France

In the absence of really suitable tools which could group a very large amount of information together, the located data of historical, architectural or archaeological references concerning caravan roads, available at the moment, have been the subject of very few significant information synthesis until now.   
 
The same is true of buildings connected to these roads: Fortified buildings, bridges, cisterns, wells, caravanserais, etc. These buildings, considered to be spatiotemporal markers, can be used as a support for an analytical inventory and, therefore, to ensure a precise modeling of these roads.

Introduced itself as the extension of the Analytic and Systematic Inventory of Caravanserais in Central Asia (1998-2004 UNESCO program), this digital information base, currently developed by the CIERA in collaboration with EVCAU, is integrating data from numerous sources, at present scattered in a number of countries belonging to the geographical area of the Ancient World, in an about twelve centuries era (from the early 8th century – to the late 19th century).        

The GIS which constitutes its central system sets itself as an objective to group together and process the information which may be available on these subjects. 
This information belongs to different disciplinary fields and appears with various scales and various levels of precision. The recording/integration/confrontation process ensures, by various crosses, to highlight geographical as well as historical continuities or permanencies, divergences or breaks.

The process paves the way, also, for questions to be sent to the specialist in the concerned disciplines, or to be the subject of particular research.

A case of practical application of freely-licensed GIS programs to the research of the East Zhou (西周) period (771-221 B.C.) of the history of East Asia
Deopik D.
Grebnev G.
Ulyanov M.
Conference Presentation

Our report summarizes the experience of usage of Free (as in 'freedom') Software in the research of the East Zhou period of the history of China (the current stage of research is further limited to the Chunqiu (春秋) sub-period, 771-476 BC) and covers both the technical and the scientific aspects of the project. Our experience will hopefully be of interest to the researchers of ancient history as well as to the researchers in the Humanities who consider using Free Software GIS systems.

Technical summary

The recent development of both QGIS and GRASS packages make the software generally usable even by people who have never used anything but Windows. It seems that Free Software in the field of GIS has just become ready to be used for applied research in the Humanities.

Historical summary

The research and comparison of the states of the given period is based on the parameters of space, time, action type, action object. A corresponding database is created based on Shiji (史记)written by Sima Qian (司马迁, 145 – 86? BC). The object of research are the states formed by the ancestors of the modern Han Chinese in the basin of the Huanghe, out of which we chose the state of Song (宋); Chu (楚), a state of the bearers of Miao-Yao languages in the middle flow of the Changjiang; Wu (吴), a state of the speakers of Austroasiatic languages in the lower flows of the Changjiang river, and a mixed nomadic-agrarian state Qi (齐) in the northern part of the Huanghe, whose territory occupied the northern part of the Shandong peninsula.