Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative: The Early California Cultural Atlas (ECCA)

The Early California Cultural Atlas (ECCA) is a collaborative research project led by Professor Steven Hackel at UC Riverside in collaboration with Jeanette Zerneke of ECAI. ECCA is developing a digital atlas of historical data related to the colonization and settlement of early California. European settlement in North America and the establishment of missions to Indians initiated dramatic demographic, environmental, religious, and social change. In the first phase of the project we constructed a website of historical change in the region of Monterey, California. Embedded Google Earth visualizations show changes by year and allow the user to interact with the data layers and time bar. The project has chosen to intentionally address ambiguity, developed an ambiguity characterization methodology, and experimented with methods to visualize characteristic land use patterns. In the process, we encountered significant new historical questions.

ECCA integrates multiple types of data such as: California Mission records from the Early California Population Project based at the Huntington Library in Pasadena; Historical maps from the Library of Congress and David Rumsey Collection; and Hand drawn maps, images, and texts from the Online Archive of California.

For further information see: http://ecai.org/nehecca