Issues on Historical Geography

In the management of art history data, the spatial and temporal context has an extensive relevance, as every information is meaningful only if it can be related to their spatial and historical context. However, the scholars are used to specify dates in many free text formats, that have a clear semantics for a human mind, but are unsuitable for computer storage and management. The proposed solution allows the specification of any possible date with a clear, simple and natural external syntax, keeping all the semantics like uncertainty or fuzziness, while keeping an internal format that allows management and comparison of such temporal data. For this purpose, a simple temporal algebra and related operators have been implemented. Data stored according to the proposed approach can be used to extract the items needed to produce historical maps, using conventional GIS software.