ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importance of space, of time, and of handling them together in academic research. It then provides a brief review of studies that have used space and time in a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) environment in historical research. It shows that GIS has much to offer to studies of this type, as it can provide a comprehensive description of what happened, where and when. The basic unit of storage within a GIS, analogous to a database table, is the layer. Within GIS in the humanities, space can thus be considered at technical, methodological and conceptual levels. There are clearly both similarities and differences in the ways that space and time can be conceptualized. The major difference is that time can be considered as being one-dimensional and flowing in a single direction, while space can be considered as two- or sometimes three-dimensional and can flow in any direction.
