What's Old is Neologism

A chorography, you say? Why, what's that?

Well, Wikipedia, that font of anonymous knowledge, says that chorology is "the study of the causal relations between geographical phenomena occurring within a particular region". A chorography, then, is writing or discussion about a specific place. Kind of vague, I know. Wikipedia also notes that Ptolemy, way way back in the 2nd century, coined the term in opposition to geography, which he saw as the study of larger regions. How you would define a small or a large region in this scheme, or why you would even need such a distinction, was unclear, and so its not surprising that chorography, an otherwise excellent and intelligent-sounding word, was cast out into the wilderness of disuse.

I first heard the term a year ago, in class, in reference to a style of European antiquarianism (so many new words!) that involved the absurdly ambitious desire to record every piece of the history of an area (a county, a town, etc.). This may not sound too crazy, but at that point in time (the early Renaissance), there were two significant complicating factors: one, there was no clear understanding of what was natural and what was man-made (stone tools, for example, were thought to be the remnants of lightning), and two, there was no well-defined set of archaeological methods that an enterprising chorographer could use to draw conclusions from what they had found. So not only would it be hard to tell what was natural and what was historically relevant, the stuff that was relevant was difficult to make sense of.

What this meant was that chorography was a) purely descriptive, as antiquarians were hard-pressed to conclude anything from what they found and b) insanely wide-ranging, including natural history, folk lore, amateur excavations, Arthurian legends, and so on. A chorographer would accept almost anything of historical value uncritically, and without a good ability to identify what was and wasn't historical, it meant that they were often collecting geological, environmental, or even contemporary social data without acknowledging it. It was a very messy way of trying to learn anything about the past, and with the professionalization of archaeology it disappeared entirely.

So, a long-defunct term, and a long-defunct intellectual perspective. Not undeservedly, as it seems to have no real purpose anymore for geography or archaeology, but sadly. It's a great word! And, I would argue, a salvageable concept, at least in some form. A chorography is a very open-ended way of looking at a physical space. Why not make it an open-ended way of looking at an issue (or series of issues) instead? Geography doesn't want the word anymore. It can be redefined: we have the technology. Toss out the penchant for excessive, meandering, uncritical description, emphasize the diversity of perspectives that makes a chorography what it is, and you, sir or madam, have a term worth blogging under.