Modelling Medieval Vagueness

Abstract

The project An Agile Approach Towards Computational Modeling of Historiographical Uncertainty is building a taxonomy of historiographical uncertainty. We are focusing on early medieval texts as our case studies, because they are characterised by a high degree of “high stakes” uncertainty and a varied historiography characterised by a vivid debate. The additional factor of the manuscript text-transmission ensues that also the material aspect of the textual study will be covered in our attempt to build an adaptable taxonomy of historiographical uncertainty. Computational humanities need a robust methodological platform, that can be applied to a wide variety of projects. Uncertainty in general and geographical uncertainty in particular stand as the crucial aspects of this platform. We investigate a methodology of visualising geographical locales in historical texts and their historiographies that explicitly models uncertainty in.