Professor Jacques Perreault, Director

The work of the Canadian Institute in 2021

Chelsea A. M. Gardner Associate Professor of Ancient History, Acadia University 

The CARTography Project: Following in the Footsteps of the Past

The CARTography Project (Cataloguing Ancient Routes and Travellers in the Mani Peninsula) is an archaeological and Digital Humanities initiative that aims to map the routes of individuals who journeyed through the Mani Peninsula in southern Lakonia from antiquity to the mid-20th century. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, we digitally reconstruct travellers’ journeys and then ground truth these results to better understand pre-modern travel. In this talk, I discuss how experimental hikes can help archaeologists better understand the embodied experience of pedestrian exploration (including seasonality, mode of transportation, and potential alternative routes), and can aid in obtaining data that is used to assess the accuracy of computer-generated models like least-cost paths.