A Method Using Esda to Analyze the Spatial Distribution Patterns of Cultural Resource

The spatial distribution pattern of cultural resource generally manifests clustered qualification to some extent, and we can infer the vicissitudes of the correlative culture by analyzing the changing rule of the spatial distribution pattern of cultural resource. However, the majority of the concerned researches are still at the level of qualitative statistics and thematic map visualization of some general features at present, without taking the characteristic into account. Aiming at making up the shortage, the paper therefore analyzes the spatial distribution of a special type of cultural resource the ancient Toponym which is defined as the name of the places where the immigrants settled down by using Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) methods. We first made both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis to confirm the existence of the clustered qualification by computing Global Moran’s I and Global Geary’s C values, later we made a further study about the similarity of different clustered regions and told them apart. At last, we came to a conclusion that not only the spatial distribution pattern of cultural resource is usually clustered, but also the similarity degree of the clustered regions differs from one another. In addition to revealing the spatial patterns of the Toponym distribution, this paper promotes an explicitly spatial view that has certain methodological implications for the application of spatial statistic methods in Cultural Geography research. ∗ Corresponding author.