Prosopography as an emerging tool
I first encountered Prosopography in the Medieval Lands Project. In the realm of research, it is halfway between regional census, family history, and academic history. We in genealogy see individuals as members of a family. Prosopography might layer that individual into a class of people. Once we visualize individuals by their role in life, we can then visualize who their work contacts or their peers would be.
FamilySearch could leverage computer power to show all the farmers in an area, all the members of a specific congregation of a specific church, or all the railroad workers or all the stone masons in an area. During their lives, these work or class or voluntary relationships would be known to each other. Many times these relationships between families will result in marriages, which affect genealogy. Envisioning all the people in a small town might allow us to know the marriage prospects of young adults, which might help clarify who a specific individual might be. This will make genealogy more accurate.
In the Medieval Lands Project, the ruling class of Europe is treated as a large group. Family Search, with the exception of the work of Roberta Dodge, has been weak in medieval family history. There is a possibility of a working relationship with the Medieval Lands Project itself. There is room for a mutually beneficial relationship. One example: With emerging computer power, which the resources of the FamilySearch community already can access, it might be possible to visualize land holdings of the gentry or the ruling class in European countries. It might be possible to show, visually, all the family alliances brought about by marriage relationships and the land holdings an intermarried family might possess. A prosopography if Virginia might be able help the descendants of slaves more accurately pinpoint relationships in a area of research that is most difficult and most painful for Americans.
My work has been in church history, particularly 15th to 17th century England, and separately, in computer research and retrieval in the law and public policy sphere. I understand how powerful geomapping software can be, and I am very interested in the intersection of geography, genealogy and political and economic history.
I believe some pioneering work could be done, and it would greatly widen the scope of research tools available to your millions of family history researchers.
Daniel Mitchel