Liszka József (szerk.): Az Etnológiai Központ Évkönyve 2000-2001 - Acta Ethnologica Danubiana 2-3. (Dunaszerdahely-Komárom, 2001)
1. Tanulmányok - Borsos Balázs: A magyar nyelvterület számítógép segítségével meghatározott kulturális régiói
the progress of science. Primarily the progress of informatics enables us to use, to treat and to elaborate a great number of cultural data, and secondly the Atlas of Hungarian Folk Culture completed at the beginning of the 1990s provides us with a great variation of cultural phenomena in a certain period of time, as the atlas, though it intends to portray some changes in cultural elements as well, mainly lays down the ethnographical picture of the Hungarian nation around 1900. Anyway, this is the best period of time to investigate the regional distribution of Hungarian folk culture, because, as László Kosa points out, the basic material of ethnographic research in Hungary is connected to it. This fortunate coincidence offers us a possibility to compare the results of our investigation with the data of that basic research. The fact that in this given period of time the territorial differences in folk culture were not yet homogenised by economic and political changes suffered by the peasantry also speaks in favour of using the maps of the Atlas (Kosa 1998, 33-36.). But we must not neglect Kósa’s opinion that an investigation of regional distribution based on ethnographical maps can offer important results only if geographic and historic elements are taken into consideration as well (Kosa 1998. 59-60.) The time section of around 1900 offers us a sufficient amount of comparable data of this kind, too. The Atlas of Hungarian Folk Culture as database The Atlas of Hungarian Folk Culture shows around 634 cultural phenomena in 417 settlements of the Hungarian-speaking territory. Not counting multiple data, this quantity means at least 264.378 data. If we want to define the cultural regions of Hungarian folk culture based on these maps, we have to deal with this huge amount of data. This means an urgent need of computer aids. But we have to employ computers not only for storing and in case of need calling forth data, but for elaborating them too. If we create a database of the data of the Atlas on computer, we can accomplish their analysis according to the regional distribution of the cultural elements shown. This involves a cluster analysis and a correlation analysis of the clusters worked out. To determine cultural regions by investigating the data in ethnographical maps or atlases is a logical idea. It appeared already in the early days of ethnocartography. In 1952, for example, Richard Weiss ( 1952) determined the border between East and West Switzerland by comparing 18 ethnographical maps. Ilmar Talve (1973-74) and Josef Gajek (1976) determined cultural regions of Finland and Poland using the same method. Even the idea of computer elaboration of ethnographical atlases appeared earlier, but mainly to diminish the difficulties of dealing with the huge amount of data (E.g.: Cox 1972; Cox-Griffioen 1977; Kehren 1996.) Linguists were more active in computer elaboration. Helmut Lausberg and Robert Möller (1996-97), for example, carried out cluster analysis as well, on the basis of 50 words and expression in Rheinland. The Atlas of Hungarian Folk Culture is a particularly good basis for this kind of investigation. Learning from the problems of other European atlases, it was edited more systematically, regarding the cultural phenomena and cross-section of time investigated, the definition of points of collection, the team of experts who collected and the principles according to which the data were put on maps. However, it still has some inconsistencies, as we shall see later. 52
