It is important to understand the assumptions and background that I, as the interpreter, brought to the process, and which would clearly influence both what I was looking for in the images, and what I recognised. Here hermeneutic theory, situating the transcription process with an ability to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced the creator's outlook, was clearly of relevance. Ask different research questions and you will digitise different features, construct different lines and GIS layers, and create different database fields and structures (Raczkowski 2002). What we can do with the Merv data is not definitive, and is not divorced from the research context and the questions we are posing.
Similarly, the scale of data-recording (fields, accuracy, etc.) reflects what you want to use them for. So, for example, how accurate do the measurements of courtyard areas need to be? Ideally, if you are interested in a specific property, perhaps very accurate (within a few centimetres), but for the broader sweep of exploring built and unbuilt space within the urban landscape, perhaps a tolerance of c. 1-2m is acceptable?
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Last updated: Mon Sept 29 2008