The digitalized version of the atlas of hungarian folk culture

Borsos, Balázs (2012) The digitalized version of the atlas of hungarian folk culture. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 57 (1). pp. 3-32. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

One of the main aims of European ethnology in the second half of the 20th century was to create the ethnographical atlases of various nations in Europe. The basic purpose of the cartographical elaboration of the regional variants of certain cultural elements of the given nation in a certain system and that of collecting them into atlases was to create a database on which investigations could be carried out to define the territorial structure of the given folk culture. The easiest way to define this territorial pattern is the computer elaboration of the database, which means the digitalization and the cluster analysis of the data made by computer. On the methods and on the possibilities of the computer elaboration of the Atlas of Hungarian Folk Culture (AHFC) a paper was held by the author at the 11th Conference of the SIEF’s International European Network (Workgroup) on Ethnocartography in Poland (Borsos 2000). At the 12th conference in Slovakia the author talked about the first results of the cluster-analysis (Borsos 2000/2001).In the last decade the computer programs for the digital version of the AHFC have been developed and the digital version has been extended with supplementary maps as well. As in the digital version we can find not simply scanned pictures of the original sheets but the basic structure of the atlas (base-map, collecting points) is also available, it is not only possible but fairly easy to add new (virtual) sheets to the atlas. So the Atlas has been supplemented with maps elaborating some of the statistical data (demographic and agricultural) of the period between 1900–1910, which is the time interval represented by the cultural data of the atlas. This virtual 10th volume of the atlas contains ‘sheets’ about important information on the cultural picture of the settlements shown and of their cultural environment. The new volume can also help to draw a more accurate map about cultural regions. Another type of supplementary maps can be seen in the virtual 11th volume showing the regional distribution of the territory inhabited by Hungarians regarding cultural and non-cultural aspects. The last section of the distributional maps shows the regional structure of the Hungarian folk culture based on the computer elaborated data of the first 9 volumes, as well as the synthetic regional structure based on the comparison of the computer-drawn picture with three other sources: the statistical investigations of the database, the maps of the two virtual volumes and the scientific literature.

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