Mapping the Ethnolinguistic Groups of South America
By: Charles M. Barstow '12
Advising Faculty: Manuel Lizarralde
My ConnSHARP (Connecticut College Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Research Program) project began in Summer 2010 under Professor Lizarralde's supervision, in which I produced a digital map of South American Indigenous peoples based on an original work by M. Lizarralde published in Venezuela in 1989. I worked in the College's Geographic Information System (GIS) lab and used ArchView software to produce the map outlining the territory of 476 Indigenous societies. (ArchView is a mapping and database software that allows manipulations of data on a map.) The original project contained the linguistic family belonging and population in the 1980s. I have since outlined the current territory of each Indigenous society. This will be an ongoing project with students to add historical and current information, such as population, and other details about these societies' cultures.
Related Fields: Anthropology