If we accept that the “substance” of a period is made of cultural phenomena, quite naturally these phenomena cover an irregular area in space-time. A period may slowly spread out from a kernel region, and still flourish at distant areas when it has vanished already at its origins. In other cases it may again “retreat” to its origins, or even separate spatially. The precise boundaries are naturally fuzzy, except may be for cases of modern political systems with precise geopolitical boundaries at any time and islands. Even then, the precise boundaries may be too complex for the utility of a general thesaurus. Therefore we foresee two kinds of approximation (fig.3) of absolute bounds. [...] The first (“max space-time”) serves rough orientation and narrowing down database searches for finds: The total of all places where the period flourished at any time is approximated by an outer (larger) spatial bound . This might be by the identifier of a geopolitical of geological unit, or by a geographical polygon, or both. The starting phase and the terminating phase when the overall period flourished is approximated by outer temporal bounds , expressed by two date ranges. Note, that last date for the begin might be after the first date for the end [...] The second (“Space time analysis”) serves a more analytical description, in particular for cases where the dates differ significantly from place to place. (fig.4) For this purpose, we foresee a break-down of the total area into individual subareas (fig 5 ), which can be associated with individual data ranges, in the same way as for the overall approximation. In general not all individual places, where a culture flourished, may be known. Our knowledge is incomplete or changes in time. Therefore the space- time analysis is normally an incomplete list of individual centers of a culture. Areas included in the “max space time” but not in the space-time analysis imply such areas for which a reliable assignment is unknown.



« Periods are spatio-temporally irregular »


A quote saved on Feb. 26, 2013.

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