Download Maps and Mapping What Is a Map?

Becoming Strangers:
Travel, Trust, and the Everyday
Day 23: Maps and Mapping
What Is a Map?
The Oxford English Dictionary Speaketh
MAP. A drawing or other representation of the
earth's surface or a part of it made on a flat
surface, showing the distribution of physical or
geographical features (and often also including
socio-economic, political, agricultural,
meteorological, etc., information), with each
point in the representation corresponding to an
actual geographical position according to a fixed
scale or projection; a similar representation of
the positions of stars in the sky, the surface of a
planet, or the like. Also: a plan of the form or
layout of something, as a route, a building, etc.
Is This Definition 100% Accurate?
Cartography: A Crash Course
Cartographers distinguish the following kinds of tools:
– PLAT – a graphical representation used for determining
boundaries & land ownership
– CHART – used for navigational purposes
– MAP – used for general reference purposes
Each of these tools has different (though intersecting) histories. The
“purposes” that they serve have varied greatly from era to era.
Beware: cartographers, like everyday people, will use “map” both in
the above specialized sense and as an umbrella term covering
plats, charts, and (the more narrowly defined version of) maps.
Plats: The Oldest “Maps”
Oldest surviving “maps” are plats from Mesopotamia
dating from ca. 2300 BCE: schematic drawings with
accompanying cuneiform text.
It was crucial in Mesopotamia (and later Egypt) to keep
track of boundaries between farms – the annual floods
erased most landmarks.
Charts: How to Get There
Appears that charts predate literacy.
Originally very much embedded in an oral culture. The chart
would be drawn while directions were given. Few or no
names provided on the chart; scale unimportant.
Essentially, a presentation of prominent or famous
landmarks in a particular sequence.
Sometimes charts would be left to inform later travelers which
way to go to reach a particular site, or which way to go to
catch up with someone. Again: minimal information
provided, such as a few arrows and signs on birch back, or
a few glyphs on a rock in a desert.
Ak Ko Mok Ki’s “Map” (1801)
Ak Ko Mok Ki, a Blackfoot chief
from the Great Plains, charted
Western North America for
Peter Fidler, a surveyor from
the Hudson Bay Company.
The Pacific Ocean is at the top.
The Rocky Mountains appear
in the middle as a double
line. Single lines are rivers.
The numbered circles are
tribes, with names provided
by an accompanying key.
Oceans are Dangerous!
Sailing on the ocean required
good information—or else
you wreck & lose lots of
money & lives.
In Mediterranean and Europe,
very detailed shore charts
(peripla) begin appearing in
classical times.
You had to know where the
islands, how deep the water,
what rivers navigable, etc.
“Age of Discovery” and Charts
European voyages across Atlantic and into Pacific required charting
the open ocean.
This led to very elaborate & accurate devices for determining your
precise location. These ocean maps are the origins of the presentday (Western) assumption that maps are “to scale” and “faithful”
to geography. (If they weren’t, you were dead!)
Maps – Organizing the World
Oldest map (in
narrow sense)
dates from ca. 650
BCE.
It depicts the city of
Babylon at the
center of a disk
of lands
surrounded by
the “bitter river.”
“Faithful” not to
geographic fact
but to a
worldview.
“Pawnee Star Chart”
Taken in 1906 from a bundle
of artifacts sacred to the
Pawnee.
Depicts earthly sites and stars
superimposed in same
“space.”
Directional arrows indicate
whether a site is
“ascending” (earthly) or
“descending” (celestial).
One is believed to walk in
both realms
simultaneously.
“Fifty Nifty United States . . .”
Jasper Johns, Map (1961)
“Imaginary” Maps?
“Imaginary” Map?
Julie Mehretu
Born 1970 in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Father is Ethiopian,
mother is from Alabama.
Grows up in Michigan, educated
in Senegal & Rhode Island.
Currently resides in New York.
Art is based on aerial maps,
maps of airports, architectural
drawings, city maps, public
transport maps, and other
common kinds of maps.
Julie Mehretu, Congress (2003)
Up Close Viewing
Julie Mehretu, Renegade Delirium (2002)
Julie Mehretu, Ruffian Logistics (2001)
Julie Mehretu at the Walker Arts Center
While in residence at the Walker
Arts Center in Minneapolis, Mehretu
interviewed 30 high school students
of East African descent
and created a web site “mapping”
the region from their perspectives.