ABSTRACT
Geovisualization, here perceived broadly as a representation of data on a digital map, has been used within a number of disciplines for different purposes: from creating new knowledge to sharing existing scholarly ideas. This chapter focuses on how building maps conceptually and with specific research questions in mind often requires a set of fresh methodologies. Methodologies ought to be tailored to conceptual research questions and existing limitations set by data, as well as aggregation, and visualization software. Through an analysis of three case studies spanning the disciplines of archaeology, linguistics and ethnology, classics and media studies, we identify a number of methodological choices and limitations for geovisualization set by available fragmented historical data, digital platforms for data aggregation, and visualization software. We then highlight two issues that are open for further development, more specifically 1) the complexities of representing multiple temporal data in one single mapping interface, as well as 2) the need for common global vocabularies and ontologies that provide us with the possibilities of linking common references.
