The Predator Microhistory Network is a GIS project and archive database working within and beyond the environmental humanities to build an interactive global map of predator microhistories. Our project aims to detail the lives of historical predators and their representative ecologies and explore the entanglements between them. A basic, one minute tutorial introducing how to navigate our map can be found on the introductory screen of the atlas on the main page.

The project is currently operating in Phase I: Bear Stories.

Every entry (data point) on this map represents a microhistory. If the animal it involves can be identified by the event (as in cases of death, capture, or if an animal known to the community is named (i.e. “The Big Bear of Marin”), it is assigned a Unique Animal Number (UAN). These microhistories are closely read for environmental and historical context and classified by a broad range of categorizations which users can engage using both the map and its corresponding, text-based archival entry which more completely fleshes out the story and provides links to other resources. The resulting, interactive layers of the map (and this corresponding, blog-style archival catalogue) allow for nuanced engagement with the historical predators whose lives are represented here. Our aim is to develop an ontology (in the computer science sense, very roughly, the process of defining categorizations for a set of data points and exploring the relationships between them) which relates well to the ontologies with which the environmental humanities are more familiar: this is to say, we are focused on building a framework with which scholars can explore and contextualize the connections between historical beings’ microhistories in ways which center animal agency.

Using code originally developed to improve scholars’ ability to make connections and explore commonalities between human histories, the project aims to reimagine the archive – historically a site of human exceptionalism – as a space to both change our relationship with cataloguing nonhuman beings and of actively centering animal life in our scholarship. We hope to take an active role in reimagining the digital archive as a site of potential for centering the agency of historical animals, to better historicizing their lives and experiences of history, and most of all, to reveal their entanglements with one another, with us, and attempt to restore the traces they have left to their original, geographic and historical context.

Importantly, PMN’s map is powered by a prototypal, open-source GIS program called Peripleo first developed for the Locating a National Collection project via the British Library, and the Linking Islands of Data project from the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge without which the project would not be possible. It is an exceptional tool and learning resource and highly recommended. To learn more about how to access any of these mapping projects’ data, or to make a map of your own, please visit our Github, which will link you with theirs!

The project is still in its early stages, and began as Anima Atlas (an identical project with a (too) large scope) which was launched (in alpha mode) at the 2024 gathering of the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) in Denver, Colorado. Project collaborators include Caroline Abbott, Jessica DeWitt, and (especially when the code breaks) Nathanial Cooper. As the project evolves we hope to continue expanding our team and aims to become a valuable digital resource and community project.