Exploration of a large database of French notarial acts with social network methods

Fabrice Rossi; Nathalie Villa-Vialaneix; Florent Hautefeuille

hal-00668224, version 1

Exploration of a large database of French notarial acts with social network methods

Fabrice Rossi ¹, Nathalie Villa-Vialaneix (, ) ¹, Florent Hautefeuille ²

Digital Diplomatics 2011 (2011)

1: Statistique, Analyse et Modélisation Multidisciplinaire (SAmos-Marin Mersenne) (SAMM)
http://samm.univ-paris1.fr/
Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne Centre Pierre Mendès France 90 Rue de Tolbiac - 75634 Paris Cedex 13 France
2: Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés (TRACES)
CNRS : UMR5608 – Université Toulouse le Mirail - Toulouse II MAISON DE LA RECHERCHE 5 Allée Antonio Machado 31058 TOULOUSE CEDEX 9 France

Bibliographic reference

hal-00668224, version 1
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00668224
oai:hal.archives-ouvertes.fr:hal-00668224
From: Nathalie Villa-Vialaneix <>
Submitted on: Thursday, 23 February 2012 17:42:48
Updated on: Thursday, 23 February 2012 17:42:48

See short view

Export

Bibtex EndNote TEI RefWorks

%% hal-00668224, version 1
%% http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00668224
@inproceedings{rossi:hal-00668224,
    hal_id = {hal-00668224},
    url = {http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00668224},
    title = {{Exploration of a large database of French notarial acts with social network methods}},
    author = {Rossi, Fabrice and Villa-Vialaneix, Nathalie and Hautefeuille, Florent},
    abstract = {{The use of electronic databases has eased exploration and analysis of large collections of charters, enabling complex prosopographical research. Despite such progress, the systematic exploration of such databases remains complex and time-consuming, especially when the number of documents under study reach one hundred or more. This poster shows how methods used to analyse large interaction networks, such as online social networks, can be applied to help historians to understand large charter or biography databases visually. The proposed approach is applied to a very large corpus of thousands notarial acts established in the same small geographical area from South West of France, mainly between the XIIIth and the XVth centuries. These documents all are land charters and provide various information such as the transaction dates and types and also the persons directly involved in the transaction. Data mining tools were developed to help the historians decipher the main features of the corpus: a network model was derived from the database and tools developed in the field of social network analysis were used to analyse it. In this network model, entities, that are either persons or transactions, are connected if a person is involved in a given transaction. Tools developed in the field of social network analysis were used to gain knowledge about the corpus and to identify some possible transcriptional errors. Visualisation methods were also applied to provide an intuitive representation of the corpus, that can be used by historians to explore the network: additional information can be added on the representation, such as dates or main persons names, giving an insight about the macro-structure of the network derived from the database.}},
    language = {English},
    affiliation = {Statistique, Analyse et Mod{\'e}lisation Multidisciplinaire (SAmos-Marin Mersenne) - SAMM , Travaux et recherches arch{\'e}ologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les soci{\'e}t{\'e}s - TRACES},
    booktitle = {{Digital Diplomatics 2011}},
    address = {Napoli, Italy},
    audience = {international },
    year = {2011},
    month = Sep,
}

%F hal-00668224, version 1
%0 Conference Paper
%U http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00668224
%2 MATH:MATH_ST;STAT:TH;SHS:HIST
%T Exploration of a large database of French notarial acts with social network methods
%A Rossi, Fabrice
%A Villa-Vialaneix, Nathalie
%A Hautefeuille, Florent
%+ Statistique, Analyse et Modélisation Multidisciplinaire (SAmos-Marin Mersenne) - SAMM , Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés - TRACES
%X The use of electronic databases has eased exploration and analysis of large collections of charters, enabling complex prosopographical research. Despite such progress, the systematic exploration of such databases remains complex and time-consuming, especially when the number of documents under study reach one hundred or more. This poster shows how methods used to analyse large interaction networks, such as online social networks, can be applied to help historians to understand large charter or biography databases visually. The proposed approach is applied to a very large corpus of thousands notarial acts established in the same small geographical area from South West of France, mainly between the XIIIth and the XVth centuries. These documents all are land charters and provide various information such as the transaction dates and types and also the persons directly involved in the transaction. Data mining tools were developed to help the historians decipher the main features of the corpus: a network model was derived from the database and tools developed in the field of social network analysis were used to analyse it. In this network model, entities, that are either persons or transactions, are connected if a person is involved in a given transaction. Tools developed in the field of social network analysis were used to gain knowledge about the corpus and to identify some possible transcriptional errors. Visualisation methods were also applied to provide an intuitive representation of the corpus, that can be used by historians to explore the network: additional information can be added on the representation, such as dates or main persons names, giving an insight about the macro-structure of the network derived from the database.
%G English
%2 international
%8 2011-09-29
%B Digital Diplomatics 2011
%8 2011-09-29
%8 2011-10-01
%2 Napoli
%2 Italy