Cartographic veracity in medieval mapping: analyzing geographical variation in the Gough Map of Great Britain

This article explores statistical approaches for assessing the relative accuracy of medieval mapping. It focuses on one particular map, the Gough Map of Great Britain. This is an early and remarkable example of a medieval “national” map covering Plantagenet Britain. Conventionally dated to c. 1360, the map shows the position of places in and coastal outline of Great Britain to a considerable degree of spatial accuracy. In this article, aspects of the map's content are subjected to a systematic analysis to identify geographical variations in the map's veracity, or truthfulness. It thus contributes to debates among historical geographers and cartographic historians on the nature of medieval maps and mapping and, in particular, questions of their distortion of geographic space. Based on a newly developed digital version of the Gough Map, several regression-based approaches are used here to explore the degree and nature of spatial distortion in the Gough Map. This demonstrates that not only are there marked variations in the positional accuracy of places shown on the map between regions (i.e., England, Scotland, and Wales), but there are also fine-scale geographical variations in the spatial accuracy of the map within these regions. The article concludes by suggesting that the map was constructed using a range of sources, and that the Gough Map is a composite of multiscale representations of places in Great Britain. The article details a set of approaches that could be transferred to other contexts and add value to historic maps by enhancing understanding of their contents.

A meta-analysis of latitudinal variations in life-history traits of roach, Rutilus rutilus, over its geographical range: linear or non-linear relationships?

1. We collated information from the literature on life history traits of the roach (a generalist freshwater fish), and analysed variation in absolute fecundity, von Bertalanffy parameters, and reproductive lifespan in relation to latitude, using both linear and non-linear regression models. We hypothesized that because most life history traits are dependent on growth rate, and growth rate is non-linearly related with temperature, it was likely that when analysed over the whole distribution range of roach, variation in key life history traits would show non-linear patterns with latitude.

Geographical variation of presentation at diagnosis of Type I diabetes in children: the EURODIAB Study

Aims/hypothesis. We aimed to describe the frequency and degree of diabetic ketoacidosis in children across Europe at the time of diagnosis of Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus and to determine if factors such as age and geographical region contribute to the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis.

Geographical Influences on Long-Run Development

We show that geographical factors influence long-run per capita income directly, as well as indirectly, through the quality of institutions. The direct influence of geography on per capita incomes is robust to the inclusion of a sub-Saharan Africa dummy and other tests. We obtain our results by replacing the usual instrument (settlers’ mortality (SM)) by stronger instruments for institutional quality (latitude, the share of the country in the temperate climatic zone). We also provide evidence that SM suffers from endogeneity with respect to institutional quality for early colonies, because of its dependence on nineteenth-century mortality data.