For this exercise, I chose to import a 1967 Northfield map and georeferenced it to modern day Northfield. With some experience mapping in Arcgis Online and Arcgis Pro from a previous class, I found the overall process to be a good review. Compared to previous spatial DH projects, I think georeferencing helps anchor ancient and older maps to real world destinations. I see several possibilities with a georectified map. Especially a map where you can toggle between the historical map and the basemap, comparisons and inferences can be made.
In the “This Map” page, I can access the map with a Web Map Tile Service, TileJSON, XYZ links. Although it was a bit difficult to find the link with my Northfield map since I had to first share it with the community. There was some difficulty sharing to the community as well since it was telling me that the map already existed despite me creating it for the first time.
Depending on the age of the map, historical maps or diagrams can come with distortion or inaccuracy issues. The global basemap is already distorted from the actual sizes of the countries, so georeferencing may not be easy to match point to point. In addition, when I was practicing with random maps, the historical maps were not flat maps but rather 2D warped on a globe shape.
I think using this method would not be appropriate for research questions that are very vague and abstract. Georeferencing requires a very accurate historical map to create accurate results. In addition , for questions that are better displayed with a different type of data visualization method such as ones that compare quantities, would not benefit much from georeferencing methods.
Overall, the georeferencing process is a good way to compare historical with modern spatial data. However, people should recognize that due to the inconsistencies of historical mapping, the georeferenced may not be mapped exactly road to road and sea to sea.
