TRAVELLING THROUGH PLACE-NAMES. A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A GEO-ATLAS OF TOPONYMS

The Toponymy is a testimony of the ”wisdom of the past” and the stratified heritage of a community. It is so necessary preserving the place names as “cultural heritages” in their sources with a careful critical analysis, interdisciplinary and “global” of their geographical properties and of their genesis in the centuries. For this purpose works at the University of Salerno the Laboratory of Historical Cartography and Toponymy which collects, catalogs, analyzes and uses scientifically, for research and geographical education, ancient maps and toponyms of the Italian and european territory. Outcomes of its researches, so far published in several essays, are based on an original model of analysis and classification which aims to encompass all the different methods of geo-toponymy investigation, in diachronic and synchronic sense, for a research about identity and spatial planning “geo culturally” sustainable. On this track, the present contribution aims to strengthen the model through new technologies, with realizing a toponymy geo-atlas based on GIS and semantic web, capable of interfacing with other databases and opened to interaction through the implementation of a barcoding system (based on Web Tag, virtual guides and georeferenced maps). So, through a simple connection to the Internet, all could interact with information concerning a specific toponym and its space, recovering the past to a better understanding of the present