A typology for annotating the Periegesis

As we have set out in our previous posts, our aim in the Digital Periegesis is to identify and explore the spatial form of, and the forms of space within, Pausanias’s narrative. The challenge of analyzing spatial representation in the Description of Greece—and the reason why we were attracted to the text in the first place—is the “thickness” of that description, whether Pausanias is taking the reader on a tour of a temple precinct, stopping off along a road to take note of a statue, or recalling the mythical stories associated with a simple looking rock.

In order to capture sufficient information about those places (or objects in space), it is first helpful to establish a set of concepts and categories when annotating them in Recogito: i.e., how they function within his narrative, and, in turn, how his narrative is constructed through spatial description. With a view to building a method that can help us annotate in a systematic and uniform manner, we have so far developed the following semantic annotation typology based on the entity and tagging feature in Recogito:

1. Entities

Recogito provides three choices of entity: place, people, event. Our primary concern is place: when we identify a place in the text, we mark it and align it to an appropriate gazetteer place entry (if we can find one). However, it is also important to identify people in the text, especially for their role in certain places (or even as proxies for place): for this we use the “people” entity (and both the “place” and “people” entity if considered to be representing a place).

2. Tags

Recogito also provides a “free” tagging features, which enables users to provide more information about those entities and construct their own schema for labelling them. For instance, for places, we want to identify: is the place human, physical, regional, or mythical; and what type of place is it? (e.g. human place might be a settlement, temple, assembly.) For people: are they mythical or historical; divine or mortal; male or female; Greek or other? Or are they a proxy for a place?

3. Relations

Fundamentally, we are interested in capturing the ways in which Pausanias constructs his description of Greece. There are various different kinds of spatial relationships that can be defined in the text, as Pausanias moves through both space and time. So far we have determined the following:

• Topographic: a place in space, as Pausanias moves through the landscape,
• Chronotopic: a place in time, as Pausanias moves through the history of a particular place/building/statue, or
• Analogic: places compared, as Pausanias relates one place to another in a different part of the world.

We use the “event” entity to highlight the sections of the text in which either or these three descriptive modes take place, and use the tagging feature to then specify the mode (topographic, chronotopic, or analogic). We then use an additional relational tagging feature, which is part of the Recogito UI, to further define those relations: e.g. are the topographic relations being described synoptic (a bird’s eye view) or hodologic (movement through space)? A further tag can be used to define focalisation–whether the description is from the narrator’s viewpoint or the perspective of another.

This represents our methodology for annotating the Periegesis at the moment. But, as we have already found, we are modifying and nuancing this typology as we move through Pausanias’s “thick” description. You may also have your thoughts about what to capture and how: we welcome your feedback!

For our latest methodological account, see:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1drDtRMdXTjLkwkDB5SYsxZQmTig8z1dN2YCE1Q-E5L4/edit?usp=sharing.