ECAI ePublication Series

The ECAI Internet Publication Series provides stable, long-term access to peer reviewed, map-based digital scholarship in history and the humanities. The first series (May 2002) includes two projects: A Sasanian Seal Collection in Context, and Mapping the Mainline: Using Historical GIS to Study American Religion.

ECAI publications include a text component, a web-based map, and a fully interactive downloadable map. The text provides a prefatory explanation of the research methods, intellectual context, and presumed value of the work. It is recommended that readers begin by exploring the text for general orientation, and then browse to the multi-media materials.

A Sasanian Seal Collection in Context: Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative Publication of the Edward Gans Collection at University of California, Berkeley

Guitty Azarpay and Jeanette Zerneke
May 2002

This Internet publication provides online access to the collection of Sasanian sealstones in the collection of the University of California at Berkeley’s Near Eastern Studies Department and contextual information on the Sasanian Empire.

The study offers a comprehensive analysis of some 370 sealstones attributed to the Persian Sasanian empire (AD 224-641) in Western Asia during the period of Late Antiquity. The database for the present publication contains information about the seal's pictorial theme and motifs, shape, material of manufacture, iconography and inscription. It is hoped that this database of Sasanian seals may be enriched by the future addition to it of other Sasanian seal collections that may be cataloged according to the relatively simple format adopted for the present study.

Electronic publication of the Seal Collection enhances the value of the collection in the following ways. It provides global access to enlarged images of the objects and of their impressions and it enables users to search the collection with multiple criteria. The user may quickly compare seals not only within this publication but also with seals from other collections. Detailed information on the history of the collection, its content, and cataloging methodology is included.

Contextual information on the history of the Sasanian Empire, maps of the empire’s extent, a gazetteer of important sites in the Empire, and images of archaeological sites are included. A map interface allows interactive viewing of the context of the empire and access to the seal collection and background information. The map interface and contextual information is provided to enhance the research and teaching value of the publication. It is hoped that by presenting a spatio-temporal context for the seal collection, research on the provenance of the seals, and other spatio-temporal patterns will be encouraged. Placing the seals in their historical context creates a cultural resource for use in teaching about the rich heritage of the Middle East.

1,176 images, 1 pdf file, 5 maps. ISBN: 0-9722712-0-1

Mapping the Mainline: Using Historical GIS to Study
American Religion (Draft)

David Bodenhamer, Etan Diamond and Kevin Mickey

The period from 1970 to 1990 was a crucial one in the history of American mainline Protestantism, following on the heels of a national "return to religion" in the 1950s and the expansion of alternative and non-western religions in the 1960s. Having stood at the top of the American religious ladder for most of the country's history, the mainline Protestant denominations now saw their membership numbers decline and their religious market share erode as conservative and evangelical Protestant denominations gained national prominence. Although much attention has been paid to mainline Protestantism's end-of-the-century decline, those discussions fail to note the social and theological diversity within these denominations as well as their geographical variations.

This article begins to address these flaws by analyzing the mainline Protestant experience from 1970 to 1990 from a geographical perspective, with an eye toward answering two questions. First, where in the United States was mainline Protestantism the strongest and weakest during this period? Second, what geographical differences were there among the various mainline Protestant denominations? By answering these questions, we can begin to strip away some of the generalizations about mainline Protestantism's decline and uncover some of the nuances to this important part of American religious history.

ISBN: 1-931944-01-6