In the footsteps of Cesare Battisti: an approach for collection and analysis of toponyms using historical maps and HGIS in Trentino, Italy (19th-21st centuries)

The paper deals with a project that aims to recover, safeguard and analyze current and past place names of the province of Trento, in northern Italy, by using historical maps and GIS software. The final result is a historical GIS of place names that could be interrogated for geohistorical research and shared with local institutions and the public. Such a currently ongoing project is being carried out by the Centro Geo-Cartografico di Studio e Documentazione, GeCo of the University of Trento. First, we will present the sources used for the purposes of the project, the developed methodology, and the dataset structure. Second, we will explain how the geodatabase has been interrogated for place names research using keywords related to past rural activities. Such queries have been carried out by using local dialect lemmas identified by geographer Cesare Battisti (1875-1916). In this sense, the paper explores the possibility to bridge past etymological research with new technologies for the analysis of place names and to support interdisciplinary research.