Next Steps

The project is a work in progress with strong ideas for enhancement and expansion. Not only is the author looking for a more customizable mapping platform that can handle more than ten layers of data, there are several avenues for expanded data analysis to come. The project has goals of:

Incorporating tourism data - Visit Scotland and the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions (ASVA) provide annual reports on Scottish tourism, including detailed statistics of visits and expenditures. Incorporating this data into the map, perhaps even in the form of heat mapping, will help to demonstrate the popularity of locations across the city and contextualize patterns in monument and memorial distribution.

Expanding case studies - in cases like the Writers’ Museum, testing trends on the microcosm can help substantiate conclusions. The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the Merchants Hall at the Company of Merchants of Edinburgh each have a hall of busts that could prove to be good subjects for mapping and qualitative analysis.

Incorporating time - the earliest monument to a woman was built in 1868, while over half of those to men were constructed prior to that date. This trend comments both on the longevity of a masculine Scottish national narrative and on the durability of their subjects in Edinburgh’s heritage landscape.

Incorporating size - the addition of plaques was the first step in this process, but categorizing monuments by size will also prove key to understanding prominence and visibility in the context of their surroundings. The Scott monument, for example, has become part of the city skyline.

Making note of profession - the addition of categories for profession will provide more insight into nineteenth- and twentieth-century understandings of gender roles and the significance placed upon them socially. For example, Scotland has no statues to female politicians, while men tend to earn memorialization in this category quite easily. See the 150ft statue to “the great tyrant” Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, for example. Even in medicine, a female craft for centuries, men like alleged murderer Dr. Hugh Dewar receive memorials over women like Elsie Inglis, war veteran and founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, or Marion Gilchrist, the first woman to qualify in medicine from a Scottish university.

Testing the methodology - applying mapping techniques to heritage landscapes in cities like London or Boston where national narratives differ but a focus on masculinity prevails could reveal broader memorialization patterns.

Investigating some of the patterns that have emerged in project data:

Why does New Town boast the highest male to female memorialization ratio at over 16:1? Is there a tangible connection between the masculinity crisis following the 1707 Act of Union and the construction of New Town fifty years later? Did New Town represent the ideal blank slate for hypermasculine presentations (whether subconscious or intentional) of local and national identity?

Broadening the data corpus - although ruled out for inclusion in the initial EBHP data corpus, analyzing trends at prominent cemeteries like the Old Calton Burial Ground and Greyfriar’s Kirkyard might also prove to be worthwhile. Do the number, location, size, and prominence of more private memorials like gravestones, tombs, crypts and mausoleums corroborate larger memorialization trends? How does gender factor into the rhetorical potential of these landscapes?