ABSTRACT
Using the presence and absence of slavery and emancipation in the commemorative landscape of Fredericksburg, Virginia (USA), as a case study, Stephen Hanna and Fariss Hodder explore how content and discourse analysis can be performed within a qualitative GIS. The chapter describes the process of building a geodatabase containing the locations and contents of historical markers in the city before demonstrating the use of spatial analytic tools to ensure that the markers’ locational attributes are utilized during data analysis. The case study illustrates how the spatial interactions of these landscape texts with each other as well as with historically themed tours and other heritage sites can determine whether slavery and emancipation are central or marginal in Fredericksburg’s commemorative landscape.
