Navigation
The navigators are guides to the site. The navigators link to the same pages, but how the navigators are organized are different. The preferred navigation method is to use the Road Universe to navigate the pages that give all of the historical and archaeological information concerning the question of why the Romans placed the roads in the Eastern Desert where they did. The Dissertation Universe navigator is used to link to all of the pages that deal with interdisciplinarity, the schools of theory, and the methodology I employed to create the GIS model. Both the Road Universe and Dissertation Universe intersect at the GIS model, yet the Road Universe provides the rationale for the creation of the model and the Dissertation Universe provides the rationale for the presentation of the model.
Both the Road Universe and the Dissertation Universe are types of cognitive maps. One definition of cognitive mapping is "a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of the phenomena in his everyday spatial environment" (Downs and Stea, quoted in Golledge and Stimson 1997:224). In this case, the spatial environment is Roman Egypt for the Road Universe, and the World Wide Web for the Dissertation Universe.
Why is this dissertation in need of navigation tools? Why is this dissertation on the Internet? This dissertation is an experiment--for the Environmental Dynamics program as well as for the University of Arkansas as a whole--in presenting doctoral research, which has been constructed using several schools of theory in a truly interdisciplinary fashion, using a multilinear tool in the form of the World Wide Web.
The navigators are shown below. In order to accommodate several learning preferences, there are both short phrases, graphics, and explanatory sentences, for each of the major links. In order to view both the graphic and the explanatory notes, it is necessary to rest the mouse pointer over the phrases for several moments before clicking. Please note that the navigators are best viewed using Internet Explorer rather than Netscape.
Road Universe--the graphic below is an unlinked version of the Road Universe. At the center is the physical manifestation of the Roman road network in the Eastern Desert of Egypt as it exists (and has been traced) today. While trying to answer the deceptively simple question of why the Romans positioned the roads where they did, I tried to list the uses of the roads and the influences that affected the roads. The uses of the roads are the four boxes that begin with the word "transport," and the six boxes below the center physical manifestation box are the variety of influences that are presumed to have an affect on the positioning of the roads. Those same six influences were used to construct my GIS model.
Dissertation Universe--just as the roads are a physical manifestation of the several factors which influenced its creation, so too is the dissertation a physical manifestation of several factors which influenced its creation. Attitudes and available technology helped shape the roads in the same way that attitudes and available technology helped shape the dissertation.
The dissertation reflects the factors of American academia today as well as aspects of the greater society. The advent of the World Wide Web has changed many aspects of life, including the way information is delivered. Software companies like Macromedia with its software programs Dreamweaver and Fireworks were used to shape the information in the dissertation into a web format. Thinkspace's GIS product, MFworks was used to create the GIS model, whose images were imported into the Macromedia software. American Academic Attitudes and Beliefs, most strongly in the form of the dissertation advisor and also the whole committee were strong factors in the presentation and elements present in the dissertation. The dissertation, while allowed to be experimental, had to also conform to certain, often intangible, "academic" standards. The organization of the dissertation, in the form of the navigators, was based on a desire to accommodate a variety of learning styles and preferences. Finally, the framework of human-environmental interaction was the contribution of the Environmental Dynamics Program philosophy.
The five schools of thought from which I drew inspiration to design the GIS model were Feminist Geography, Human Behavioral Ecology, Classical Archaeology, Anthropological Archaeology, and Economic Anthropology. These disciplines do not stand alone and independent, but have many interconnections in amongst themselves. These five disciplines were chosen in an effort to implement truly interdisciplinary research.
As mentioned above, the preferred navigation method is using the two "universe" cognitive maps. In order to satisfy some aspects of academic-ness, as well as to aid those readers with sequential learning preferences, a linear navigation tool has also been created. A third type of navigation tool, which is only really possible with the multilinear abilities of the Web, is the set of constellations. These constellations do not encompass the whole of the two universes (road and dissertation) but rather follow specific themes which interweave the two universes, creating a third dimension to the two dimensional format.