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Digitizing Tonga: A Linguistic-Socio-Geographical Database During
the academic year 2000-2001, using ArcView GIS, Professor Giovanni
Bennardo started the preparation of a linguistic-socio-geographical
database about three field sites in the Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia.
Currently, it contains the map of Tonga, detailed maps of specific
archipelagoes and islands, of the capital town, and of specific villages.
In one village, each house on the detailed map I drew during my fieldwork
has been linked to its photo, to a family tree of its residents, to
the other houses where the relatives of the house residents live,
and to the plots cultivated by the house residents and their relatives.
Parts of this database are available on the World Wide Web at this
address:
http://atlas.lib.niu.edu/tongalayer1.html The database is still under construction and will be updated during and after field visits in the following three years. Its final form will be a 3-D representation of the geographical reality of some villages in Tonga linked to a variety of linguistic and socio-cultural data including social networks. The availability of this database in the field and during the analyses will serve a variety of functions. It can be used during the interviews to ask appropriate and relevant questions, to check the information provided, and to stimulate interviewees to explain their descriptions when compared to the digitized data. Similarly, during the analyses of the linguistic and social networks data, the digitized information will provide the ethnographic underpinning to their interpretations.
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Department
of Anthropology
Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL 60115 Phone: (815) 753-0246 Fax: (815) 753-7027 |
Departmental
Chair: Dr. Judy Ledgerwood (jledgerw@niu.edu) |