DECM Gazetteer

The DECM Historical Gazetteer is a digital gazetteer of historical places in Mexico available in different formats and built from detailed research. This includes a 16th century version (The DECM 16th Century Gazetteer) with the toponyms mentioned in primary sources including the Relaciones Geográficas (1577-1585) and the Suma de Visitas de los Pueblos de la Nueva España (1548-1550), as well as information on the political, religious and administrative units of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The gazetteer is composed of 71 main files with geographic information of colonial provinces, alcaldias, corregimientos, diocesis, among many others, as well as thousands of historical cities, towns, villages, and other places. This is integrated in an interoperable model containing thousands of historical locations with alternative spelling place-name variations. The dataset also includes 30 tables with additional historical information related to toponyms, languages, repositories, maps, etc.

There are two versions of the DECM Historical Gazetteer: 1) The DECM Gazetteer, and 2) The DECM_16thC_Gazetteer.

This is the DECM Gazetteer and this version includes all the researched historical toponyms contained in primary and secondary sources. The information is organised by RG volume. It also includes layers and tables of historical information digitised and/or created by the project from secondary sources.

This set is composed by GIS shapefiles & Linked Places format information with: a) all toponyms with coordinates, mentioned and disambiguated from the primary sources (13 volumes) and secondary sources (3 volumes); b) 30 geographical layers of additional historical information derived from secondary sources; c) 32 tables with other important historical information related to the RGs; and d) the DECM Gazetteer Registry.

Content

1. DECM_Gazetteer_primarysources: Contains 17 shapefiles (points and polygons) with historical geographies. They have 
been created from the indexes of the edited volumes of the Relaciones Geográficas de la Nueva España and Yucatán 
published by Acuña, De la Garza, and the Suma de Visita de los Pueblos by Del Paso y Troncoso (see sources used) 
disambiguated and atomized in a spatial database. Each shapefile include the following attributes: ID, Place name, 
Alternative Names, Modern Name, References, Location, Confidence Degree, ID of a related location, Relationship shared, 
Location Type, Type Thesaurus URL, Coord X, Coord Y, Time spam URL, Start date, End date. Every shapefile includes 
metadata.

2. DECM_Gazetteer_secondarysources: Contains 4 shapefiles (points and polygons) with historical information mentioned 
and collected from 4 secondary sources. 

3. DECM_Additional_Information: Contains 49 shapefiles (points and polygons) with additional information on historical 
geographies. They have been created by digitising historical studies on 16th century Colonial History of Mexico.

4. DECM_Tables: Cointains 2 folders with additional tabular data with relevant information about 16th century colonial 
Mexico in two formats: csv and xlsx.

5. Documents:

a) DECM_Gazetteer_Disambiguation_Percentage.xlsx - Excel document with the total amount of toponyms included 
in the primary and secondary sources used, the number and percentage of places disambiguated where X and Y coordinates 
were assigned or not found. 

b) DECM_Gazetteer_Registry.xlsx & CSV: Excel and CSV files with a list of all the information of sources and attibutes 
included in DECM_Gazetteer_primarysources, DECM_Gazetteer_secondarysources, DECM_Additional_Information,
and DECM_Tables.

c) Souces_for_the_Disambiguation - Text file with the bibliographical references used to locate the 
place names in the DECM_Gazetteer_primarysources folder.