MAPPING CHARLEMAGNE'S MOVEMENTS AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS 8TH AND 9TH CENTURY GAUL

Publication Date

4-5-2019

Document Type

Poster

Degree Type

Undergraduate

Mentor

Kathryn Jasper

Abstract

Using MAXQDA, a text mining software, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this project looks at the geography of Charlemagne's travels and the infrastructure projects he built over his reign. A translated copy of the Royal Frankish Annals (RFA) was the main primary source throughout the project but also used the Life of Charlemagne by Einhard to supplement understanding of Charlemagne. Infrastructure as defined within this project are bridges, castles, a lighthouse, and a canal he started in 793 A.D. but never completed due to weather conditions. This research began by using MAXQDA to create a system of tagging words and sentences to find spatial patterns between Charlemagne's movements and the projects and between the projects in the RFA themselves. MAXQDA, however, crashed and lost all of the research for the semester. After this crash it was decided it would not possible to recreate the data in the time left of the semester. This project was then combined with GIS project from another class to focus on just looking at Charlemagne's movements across the empire. Continuing this research into an independent study this semester, this project is now focused on researching other primary sources, including another Life of Charlemagne written by Notker, polyptyques (inventories of resources, mainly for monasteries), and other texts from Charlemagne's reign to further study his movements around Gaul before mapping them in a GIS.

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