Social Sciences and History / Unit 10 SSH 0912 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Absolute or Relative? Locating a Place Two Ways
The idea
The exam gives a description of a place and asks whether it locates by absolute or relative means, and the anchors define both. Absolute location is a position on the graticule: degrees of latitude north or south of the equator and longitude east or west of the Prime Meridian, an address that never changes and depends on nothing nearby. Relative location, the anchor's situation, describes a place by what surrounds it: its distance and direction from other places, its position on routes, its neighbors. Site, the physical character of the place, is a third description, neither coordinate nor neighbor. Finlayson's spatial perspective frames the same pair as where a thing is and where it is in relation to other things.
In practice
Given "forty degrees north, seventy-four west", absolute. Given "at the mouth of the Hudson, a day's sail from Boston", relative. Given "on a deep natural harbor with a rocky shore", site. Given "downstream of the capital on the main rail line", relative. Ask whether the description would still hold if every other place vanished; only the absolute one would.
Where people slip
The trap is treating a street address as absolute; it is relative to a city's grid, which is why the anchor reserves absolute for coordinates. The second trap is site against situation: site is what the ground is, situation is what the ground is near.
Your place on the trail
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Unlocks
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