Creating time capsules for historical research in the early modern period: Reconstructing trajectories of plant medicines

Abstract

Historians argue that tracing early exchange, trade and uses of plant medicines (materia medica) can elucidate dynamics of drug trajectories in the early modern period. However, information on how these drug trajectories have evolved is hidden in large amounts of heterogeneous historical data. These data are in different formats, languages, genres and stages of digitization, thus creating huge challenges for i) accessing information, ii) presenting aggregations, trends and patterns, and iii) making the research process transparent and traceable for sharing, collaboration and validation. In this paper, we present the historical research platform of the Time Capsule system, from the user's perspective. We illustrate this with an extensive example, to show how the semantic integration of diverse historical data sources into a single linked data knowledge structure in our Time Capsule system has practical applicability for historical research.