Zeit und Raum. Visualisierung und Analyse von Geodaten über Transaktionen mit Basler Liegenschaften in der Vormoderne

This paper explores how information extraction and geographic information systems (GIS) can be combined to open new perspectives for urban economic history research. Using the example of Basel’s old town between 1300 and 1700, we analyse ‘economic activities related to houses’ and demonstrate the entire process from data acquisition and preparation to visualisation. Drawing on the ‘Historisches Grundbuch Basel’ (Historical Land Registry of Basel), textual data is linked to geographical information to identify spatiotemporal patterns. Automatic text recognition, georeferencing, and visualisation algorithms (in particular, heat maps, hexagonal grids, and cluster analyses) are employed for data preparation and analysis. These methods capture the city’s economic and social dynamics and enable the formulation of new research questions. The results highlight the importance of careful data preparation and the marking of uncertainties as well as the role of algorithmic applications in historical research. Our work underlines that visualisations do not simply present final results; instead, they serve as intermediate forms of analysis that open up new possibilities for insight, question existing assumptions, and foster serendipitous discoveries.