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The Royal Dutch Geographical Society, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam Library, hosted an exhibition called "Maps Unfolded" in 2023. The exhibition showcased a wide range of maps, atlases, and other cartographic materials from the society's collection. The exhibition was divided into two parts, with the first part focusing on maps of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Europe, and the world, while the second part explored themes such as colonial relationships and Dutch interaction with water. The exhibition also included a room dedicated to contemporary mapmaking technologies and a visual presentation of the map of the future. The exhibition aimed to attract a broad audience and highlight the expressive nature of maps. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the role of exhibitions in promoting scholarly research and collection development, specifically in the field of historical map scholarship. The author reflects on their career at the Newberry Library and the impact of changes in the field, such as a shift towards a processual approach to map study. The author also describes their final exhibition, "Crossings: Mapping American Journeys," which aimed to showcase the Newberry's collection of maps, guidebooks, and travel accounts related to the United States. The exhibition sought to explore the history of travel mapping, including the experiences of marginalized groups such as migrants and enslaved individuals. The author explains their approach to representing these diverse travel experiences in the exhibition, using maps, non-cartographic objects, and multimedia elements. The exhibition was designed as a map itself, allowing visitors to see the connections between different travel experiences. [Extracted from the article]

Victimhood is one of the most powerful forces in modern politics. This article examines how it has been expressed cartographically across the past two centuries, highlighting the development of new techniques and strategies that have made victim maps increasingly powerful discursive weapons. The first part of the article looks at attempts to represent victimhood before World War I, noting some of the limitations of these early efforts. The second part shows how simplification, the increasing use of new symbols, and other cartographic sleights of hand made maps more effective at conveying victimhood by the middle of the twentieth century. The final section looks at victim maps used in debates over the conflict in Ukraine (going back to 2014) to show their persistent strength and important role in shaping contemporary global politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ipiranga Museum in Brazil has used historical maps in its exhibitions to tell the story of Brazil's independence, but the interpretation and display of these maps have evolved over time. The article discusses how maps can support contradictory narratives and challenge traditional cartographic scholarship. It also examines the museum's past focus on colonial cartography, which silenced indigenous contributions. The museum has recently shifted its focus to highlight indigenous agency and territorial knowledge, reflecting a broader movement towards decolonization and inclusivity in archives. The 2022 exhibitions aim to challenge conventional understandings of mapping and shed light on indigenous languages and labor in colonial São Paulo. [Extracted from the article]

The U.S. government sent four major groups of explorers into the American West in the late nineteenth century. The United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, more commonly known by the name of its director, George Montague Wheeler, was among these. This survey had the goal of mapping the West and producing an atlas of 143 sheets covering the United States west of the Mississippi River. Though 49 maps were completed, no final atlas was ever published and government surveyors criticised the work as obsolete and inadequate. Wheeler's mapping marked an important development in the mapping of the West, however, and provides a useful resource for understanding land use and settlement change in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir Aurel Stein, known for his discovery of medieval Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts in Dunhuang, China, was also a surveyor and cartographer. His final major maps of China, created between 1918 and 1922, depicted the politically sensitive Chinese frontier between British India and Russia. These maps provided topographic knowledge for scholarly and political elites, supported Stein's career, and laid the foundation for his theories of Central Asian history. Stein's maps also relied on the contributions of translators, local guides, and surveyors, highlighting the unequal nature of their collaboration. Despite some flaws, Stein's maps were well-received and valued for their illustration of his journeys and archaeological claims. They also revealed the complex dynamics of imperial knowledge and social relations. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the practice of drawing sea routes on early modern East Asian maps, specifically focusing on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean maps. The lines on these maps represent mental constructs rather than physical routes, as ships can chart different courses based on changing conditions. Japanese maps often depict a network of routes connecting harbors and islands, emphasizing the archipelago's unity. Chinese maps, on the other hand, tend to focus on connecting China with other regions in Asia, highlighting tribute relations, military matters, and private trade. These maps also integrate the Americas, Europe, and Africa, showcasing Japan's place in an expanding world. The function of route lines on maps can change depending on their audience and purpose. East Asian maps emphasize a present network and maritime integration, challenging the notion of isolation. [Extracted from the article]

For example, a single topographic sheet created digitally would be called a born-digital map, but we would not consider a web-mapping application to be a born-digital map. Map libraries are already likely to use content-management systems to provide access to their scanned map collections, making adding born-digital maps technically simple. Many major map collections across the United States have successfully focused on digitally reformatting their print collections and/or the collection of geospatial data in a way that has been to the detriment of acquiring born-digital maps. [Extracted from the article]

Following acquisition, digital maps need to be catalogued, but often limited suitable metadata are published with geospatial datasets, and (compared to paper maps) more metadata are needed to properly curate and archive digital map datasets. For map curators, digital maps hold some advantages over paper maps in requiring less physical space to store, in being simpler to copy and in being easier to distribute internationally to diverse audiences. This live, networked, interactive map viewer is able to display and to compare all map datasets that have been deposited, as well as compare different annual deposits of the same mapping over time. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents an alternative approach to reading the temporal layer of medieval mappaemundi by comparing its shape to that of a sundial rather than superimposing a vertical chronological axis on the map. The possible uses of introducing such an analogy are discussed with regard to the late thirteenth-century Hereford world map. While this article does not seek to override established findings, it argues that adding this new interpretation to the existing research could potentially enrich our understanding of the ties between time and space in medieval cartography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI), supervised by the Anglo-Irish linguist and civil servant George A. Grierson, surveyed and classified more than seven hundred languages and dialects. An integral part of the state-funded survey was mapping where languages were spoken in India, which resulted in the publication of 45 language maps between 1899 and 1927. As individual maps they are comparable to other thematic maps of the period. As a series of language maps, however, they are inconsistent in scale, colour, use of relief and labels, and depiction of boundaries. This paper argues that the inconsistency in presentation reflected the LSI's experimental approach to mapping language, trying to reconcile the approximate representation of a complex geographical phenomenon with the colonial state's expectation for accurate and up-to-date language maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1807 and 1812 a Polish nobleman named Edward Raczyński funded the making of a multi-sheet topographic map at a scale of 1:125,000. Neither completed nor published, the map was lost in the Second World War and survives only in the form of photostatic copies: one set made by a local scholar, another by an occupying army. While Raczyński's map has been mined for its historical data, the authors see it as a paradox on two levels. It is argued, first, that Raczyński was more concerned with undertaking a survey for strategic military purposes than with making a nationalist argument for reconstructing a lost Polish state, as was characteristic of other maps drawn at this time. Second, the tremendous amount of work put into the map's extensive, systematic detail suggests the map was unusual for a simple private initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Council of Tarragona has acquired an unpublished map of the city showing fortifications proposed by the occupying Napoleonic Army during the 1808–1814 Peninsular War but never built. Consequently, the map illustrates a little-known moment in the history of Tarragona not addressed by any material in military archives. The proposed reduction of Tarragona would have cut the upper part of the city into two zones, entirely changing the area's topography. The French strategy was to consolidate the whole city in a way that would more effectively reinforce it and reduce its vulnerability to flank attacks. The map presents a unique, urban example of the important role mapping played in Napoleonic military strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to now the literature dealing with the cartography of the former Duchy of Pomerania has assumed that wall map of the region by Eilhardus Lubinus (Eilhard Lubin) had two editions: the first dating from 1618 and the second from 1758. Detailed analysis of correspondence between the mapmaker and his patron, the Pomeranian Duke Philip II, and later letters relating to arguments over payment and paper supplies as well as of a recently discovered copy of the map (now at the University of Szczecin), however, point to the existence of a third edition. This, it is suggested, dates from 1619–1620 and was financed by Lubin himself. Research has also revealed that the paper on which this new exemplar was printed came neither from the Pomeranian dukes' paper mill (as for the 1618 edition) nor from the Unold paper mill in Wolfegg (as for the 1758 edition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a detailed description and analysis of the map of Britain in British Library, MS Harley 1808, in its manuscript context and in comparison with the Gough map of Britain. It is argued that the map in MS Harley 1808, which can be dated to between 1422 and c.1450, was almost certainly copied in York. Detailed consideration of it in its manuscript context shows that it could be read as a support to the narrative of British history which traced the lineage of English kings back to the legendary founder of the kingdom, Brutus. Concluding remarks consider the implications of that reading for the Gough map. An appendix lists toponyms on the map of Britain in MS Harley 1808 and compares them with their equivalents on the Gough map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 2023, I added the ability to search my database for any text or toponym that appears on a map; with partners we have developed a method to index all the words on the maps, a major break-through in searching. In the virtual world Second Life, I built spaces to explore the map database in three dimensions (Fig. From the beginning of my map collecting in the early 1980s, I was aware that I was in essence creating a larger context in which each part related to another. [Extracted from the article]

The main, and largest, part of the book contains 22 excerpts of narratives dealing with traversing the strait. The book closes with a selection of early maps and charts depicting the straits and their surroundings. The text that accompanies each map or chart first deals with the author, context and various characteristics before concentrating on the representation of the strait. [Extracted from the article]

Colour on maps is a key component in their use and meaning. Hitherto, however, the terms by which the different categories of the purpose of colour are usually described tend to be inconsistent. The aim in this brief note is to discuss these terminologies and suggest a working definition for each, with a view to establishing, in the longer term, an explicit methodology for the study of colour on maps. To illustrate the three key terms discussed here, particular reference is made to manuscript maps and hand-coloured woodblock prints produced in East Asia, especially in Korea and China before the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tension between pro- and anti-slavery factions during the delineation and mapping of Kansas Territory in the 1850s, as Euro-American settlement moved west of the Mississippi River, permeated local politics and commerce. Despite the standardized surveying system employed by the U. S. General Land Office, this tension was reflected in township or sectional state maps that were produced during this time period. Using government surveys and reports documenting the progress of township surveys, commercial map publishers and land agents produced maps with the purpose of promoting quick land sales and profits. Yet the profit motive is not the only one apparent in these maps, and the history of their production is rife with intriguing stories involving conflicts of interest for government employees and the pro- and anti-slavery politics that dominated this critical period in U. S. history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the sparse documentary evidence for the important mid-eighteenth-century mapmaker John Rocque, this article looks to examine the nature and development of the Huguenot's professional career through a closer consideration of a broader sampling of his output than has previously been the case. This entails an acknowledgement of the importance of his work as a decorative and topographical engraver, which predates his more famous city and county maps, as well as a sustained consideration of his last great original city plan, An Exact Survey of Dublin. This was Rocque's only house-by-house city map, one over which he had full control and that is more representative of his map making than the 24-sheet London map for which he is generally more famous. Rocque's move from estate surveyor to city mapmaker is considered in the light of the previously only partly explored input into the surveying methodology of the London map by the Royal Society's secretary Peter Davall. Attention is also drawn to two previously unpublished letters by Rocque to his nephew in Mannheim, written the year before Rocque went to Dublin in 1754, and which point to Rocque's expectations of his own demise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of preserving born-digital maps and the potential loss of unique cartographic heritage. It suggests that cartographic collections have likely lost a significant number of digital maps compared to physical maps. The article also highlights the democratization of cartography through digital mapping, which allows for the inclusion of marginalized voices and phenomena not previously documented. The author proposes collective efforts to document digital maps and suggests various methods for preservation. Overall, the article emphasizes the need to accelerate efforts to preserve a diverse range of digital maps for future cartographic scholars. [Extracted from the article]

[Completes the Library's holdings of Sotzmann's maps of the New England states] Cambridge University Library: "The David Webb British road-map collection" of over 250 books, atlases and maps was donated, including three states of the Ogilby atlas (1675) and sets of its derivatives. The curator and assistant curator roles for Maps have been discontinued, leaving no direct map curator positions in the Australian state / national-library system. Six atlas maps of the Netherlands from the University Library (by Ortelius, De Jode, Mercator, Hondius, Blaeu and Janssonius) were used for a postage-stamp series, "The first atlases"; and the Library of the Vrije Universiteit started a crowdsourcing project to georeference all pre-1900 maps in its collection. Ira and Carrol Lourie donated the Ira S. Lourie Map Collection to the Alice Virginia and David W. Fletcher Library, Washington County Free Library, Hagerstown, Maryland, comprising about 190 maps and atlases, from the seventeenth century onwards, focusing on Maryland. No. 3 ... i [Chattanooga, Tennessee, I c i .1864] Field-lithographed map of northern Georgia, accompanied by early manuscript notes relating the map's use in the escape of Captain George W. Bowers from a Confederate P.O.W. camp. [Extracted from the article]

In 1806, High Court judge Luiz Gonzaga de Carvalho e Britto published the first Portuguese manual devoted to making property-register books. In this, he advocated a curious method for surveying and drawing estate maps, one based on his own experience as a mapmaker. Britto's aim in compiling the manual was to instruct other judges in the map-making techniques needed for registering property. In this article, Britto's maps and method of map making, as articulated in his manual, offer a window into the practice of estate mapping in early nineteenth-century Portugal. They also convey an idea that was controversial in its time: that judges themselves should be involved in the production of estate maps. While estate mapping was common across Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in Portugal they were a rare phenomenon, hence the scarcity of these maps in archives, and the uniqueness of Britto's example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British Library's vast manuscript collection includes a well-illustrated almanac created in northern England and dated to c.1420. Among its miscellaneous contents are three T-O maps, one of which is the subject of this article. The manuscript as a whole has been discussed in a number of works, but the map in question has received no attention. It is a list map, giving the names of the provinces of the three continents of the world as they were distributed among the three sons of Noah after the Flood. The names of the provinces follow not the Isidorean model, but Nennius's Historia Brittonum (ninth century). Moreover, the position of the continents on the map in Royal MS 17.A.XVI is highly unusual: Europe occupies the largest segment of the map, traditionally dedicated to Asia. Here we consider the map in relation to the manuscript, its textual source and its possible purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing narratives of the history of cartography placed indigenous and ancient maps together in a preliminary section as precursors of cartography per se and ignored East Asia's mapping traditions. Ultimately, the object of Thrower's intellectual passion was not the science of cartography, but the graphic map designed by human ingenuity and crafted by the human hand. By contrast, when Thrower came to write his own summary of map history - I Maps and Man i (1972) - he included a separate chapter on East Asian cartography, and he discussed indigenous mapping as only suggestive of how and why prehistoric peoples would likely have made and used maps. [Extracted from the article]

The maps of a Spanish imperial frontier in the Philippines made in the eighteenth-century by the missionary Alejandro Cacho reflect an ethnographic approach that simultaneously reified and undermined Spanish notions of conquest and civilization. While Cacho celebrated mission towns and denigrated unsubjugated settlements, several elements of his maps subverted that message by recognizing the presence of animist communities and the different mobilities taking place at the frontier. The apparent conflict of messages is explained by the context in which the maps were made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maps became increasingly affordable in England between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. A survey of inventories made for probate or compiled privately, personal library catalogues and atlas subscription lists shows that maps were owned by people from different levels of society and that, irrespective of status, the maps served two principal purposes: decoration and instruction. Mapmakers and sellers were aware of these interests and worded their advertisements accordingly, emphasizing the ornamental and intellectually 'useful' qualities of their maps. For their owners, the maps were usually deeply personal possessions. The different types of maps owned, and the ways they were used, tended to reflect an important aspect of the owners' identity, such as their travels, profession, family history and attachment to a particular place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the middle of the sixteenth century, in Mechelen, Jacob van Deventer began an enterprise of epic proportions: to draw maps of all the towns and cities in the Low Countries and bring them together in an atlas. Made at the request of Philip II of Spain, these maps are generally considered to have been intended as military documents. A close analysis of the strategies of representation developed by van Deventer for his maps suggests that his mapping should be read as a vision of the Low Countries that was influenced more by political than by military interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My research tries to fill some of these gaps with respect to the Genoese World Map of 1457 by asking what kind of content was transmitted in map form and what was the nature of its makers and recipients. The map called the Genoese World Map has no known author or place of origin.[8] Written in Latin, it shows the known parts of the inhabitable earth covered by a geometrical system of orthogonal lines and diagonals. More than twenty years ago, Brian Harley published his seminal argument that maps were means of understanding the human world spatially.[1] Since then, communicative, medial and epistemic aspects of maps have received ample attention.[2] Yet questions about the relationships that emerge through this process of communication still invite questions such as: At the time the map was drawn, was transmission conceivable not only among people but also between human reason and nature, and between humans and God?. [Extracted from the article]

Cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic-Islamic World, 1100-1500: Divergent Traditions; Picturing the Islamicate World: The Story of al-I akhri's Book of Routes and Realms: Edited by Alfred Hiatt. Al-Idrisi himself never referred to this circular world map, for which reason scholars recently have dubbed it "the Idrisian map", suggesting an association with Idrisi rather than his actual authorship. I akhri says that al-Balkhi, shortly before 921, had completed a commentary on a set of seventeen regional maps, three maps of seas (the Mediterranean, the Persian/Indian Ocean, and the Caspian Sea) and one world map. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the book "Vermeer's Maps" by Rozemarijn Landsman, which explores the cartographic references in the paintings of Johannes Vermeer. The book focuses on the wall maps depicted in Vermeer's paintings and provides in-depth analysis of each map, discussing their history, production, and significance. The author also examines the relationship between the maps and Vermeer's art, as well as their appeal to the artist and his audience. Although originally intended to accompany an exhibition, the book stands alone as an important contribution to the existing scholarship on Vermeer and cartography. [Extracted from the article]

- Jordana Dym, Chair, ISHMap Trustees B ISHMap General Meeting (2020) b At the Society's General Meeting, members elected the 2020-2021 Trustees. After the ISHMap symposium on "Survey, State, Map" organized by the 2018 Chair of the Trustees Matthew Edney at the Osher Map Library and University of Southern Maine (Program: https://oshermaps.org/ishmap2018), Denise Moura (Brazil) and current ISHMap Chair Jordana Dym (US) convened a committee - Andréa Doré (Brazil) and ISHMap Trustees Junia Furtado (Brazil) and Carla Lois (Argentina) - to organize the Society's 5th symposium on the theme of "Breaking Boundaries" for June 2020. Finally, the Trustees announced a call to host ISHMap's 2022 and 2024 symposia. [Extracted from the article]

Advanced doctoral students whose dissertations are substantially concerned with the history of cartography are invited to contact the editor of this section (Dr Elizabeth Baigent, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford OX2 6PW, UK; elizabeth.baigent@wycliffe.ox.ac.uk) to discuss the submission of a short article. For a list of doctoral theses in progress see . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the central Ottoman archive in Istanbul has been gradually releasing and computerizing thousands of maps stored in its collections. Our study introduces 137 maps already available to researchers that focus either directly or indirectly as part of broader presentations of imperial domains on the Ottoman Empire’s Arab provinces. These maps, which all date to between the middle of the nineteenth century and the First World War, differ widely in character, content and function. The maps are briefly described according to their content and set in their historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan’s early modern Tokugawa government (1603−1868) sponsored a series of projects of national mapping. The Matsumae family, ruling what is now Hokkaido, were loosely incorporated into these projects. It was only during the last of these, in the Tenpō era (1830−1848), that their lands were represented in the same manner as the rest of Japan because the central government made the final Matsumae-no-shima map. This article examines the production of this final official map of Japan’s north to argue that the Tokugawa’s institutional mapping made this region part of the nation through its own mapping framework, distinct from the cartographic forms with which national or imperial states are usually associated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that virtually no Chinese maps have survived from the first millennium, it is nonetheless possible to reconstruct a rich context associated with their production, use and perception from a variety of written sources. Three cases from the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) are presented in this article in which the characteristics of the missing maps emerge through their associated texts, which have outlasted them. These examples include two documents that once accompanied maps presented to the emperor and an anecdote that refers to a map of the remote southern frontier. They demonstrate that the maps were designed not only to encapsulate imperial territory but also to serve as guideposts for aspirational travel. They were also perceived by their users as invitations to experiences both desirable and undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With about 1,200 toponyms, it contained three times more names than Johann Criginger's hitherto authoritative map of Bohemia (1568) that had been copied by Ortelius, and for the first time it showed the kingdom's administrative divisions. Yet only seven copies of the four editions of the map, published in 1619, 1632, 1665 and in the first half of the eighteenth century, are known to survive - all but one of them in Prague - and the map itself, as opposed to those derived from it, is little-known outside the Czech Republic. The authors have used cartometric analysis to test the conclusions of their predecessors concerning the scale of Aretin's map and the assumption that all four editions were taken from the same copper plates. [Extracted from the article]

The work of Eugene Romer, founder of Polish geography, was framed by his involvement in the national cause. TheAtlas of Poland, a key tool in his political activism, was completed during the First World War under the uncertain circumstances prevailing on the Eastern Front. It focused more on the issue of unification than on boundaries. Skilled in physical geography, Romer made use of a cartographical technique rarely applied to ethnographical maps, that of isopleths. In this article, we address the reasons for this daring innovation and consider Romer’s training in the Austrian and German schools of cartography before examining the reception of the atlas by geographers from the different academic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Preliminary Articles of Peace signed in Paris on 30 November 1782 brought the American Revolutionary War to a close and defined the external limits of the United States of America. During negotiations, manuscript red boundary lines were added to the northwestern parts of at least two editions of John Mitchell’s 1755 map of North America. These red lines illuminate how Captain Jonathan Carver’s cartography and journal influenced the peace proceedings. Knowledge of Carver’s achievements in the northern Mississippi valley and western Great Lakes region gave the American commissioners a negotiating advantage and a more complete understanding of their ‘water line’ boundary and vast hinterland extending northwest of Lake Superior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the changes made to the cartography of southern Africa between 1725 and 1749 by the French geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville. The maps in question were produced in collaboration with the Portuguese ambassador Dom Luís da Cunha as part of d’Anville’s plan to demonstrate what lay between the Portuguese colonies of Angola in the west and Mozambique in the east and to establish a link across the continent. The maps he produced in the first two phases of his mapping of southern Africa (1725–1731) echoed the traditionalhorror vacui. The vast blank that appeared on his map ofAfriqueof 1749, however, has to be seen as d’Anville intended—the integration of empty space on a map with Enlightenment rationalization of geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A schematic map of Cyprus, unique in the Byzantine world, is found in two Greek manuscripts of the mid-fourteenth century (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS A 95 sup.) and its copy (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS gr. XI.21 (coll. 453)). The article examines the context of its creation, possibly by the physician who collected the medical texts copied in the manuscripts. The map testifies to the perception of a man who is able to sketch the shape of the littoral freehand. He exaggerates the bays and headlands, and notes almost exclusively localities on the coast; inland, only Nicosia, the capital of the island, is shown. In particular, two religious monuments, considered the oldest and most visited on the island (the Basilica of St Epiphanius in Salamis and the Monastery of the Holy Cross–Stavrovouni) are marked, indicating that the author also wanted to celebrate the Christian antiquity of Cyprus and its relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to shed some light on the origins of Ptolemy’s map of the world, which remains a mystery. The premise is that Ptolemy and other ancient geographers largely drew on the same or a similar pool of sources and common beliefs. Similarities between them can, therefore, give us a key to understanding the prehistory of Ptolemy’s map. Comparison of distances on his map with those given by other sources leads to the conclusion that a large area of the map, approximately from the Bosporus to the Indus, reproduced Eratosthenes’ geographical system, with linear distances converted to angular degrees according to Eratosthenes’ own scale. It is argued that this area represents a remnant of an earlier version of Ptolemy’s map. Analysis of latitude and longitude reveals notable differences between Ptolemy’s map and Eratosthenes’ ideas concerning the latitude of Babylon and the Alexandrian prime meridian, and the impact this seems to have had on the shape of neighbouring regions is noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents images on a Gough map of Great Britain which features places including East Anglia, York and Lincolnshire in England.

Remarkably little is known about the earliest surviving separate-sheet medieval map of Britain that takes its name from its former owner, Richard Gough (1735–1809), and that has been variously dated to between 1300 and 1400, and later. It presents a sophisticated cartographical image at a time when detailed maps of individual regions were almost unknown in Europe, yet nothing is agreed about its possible origins, context (ecclesiastical or secular), or why and how it was compiled. In the belief that historical interpretation has to stem from an intimate knowledge of the map as artefact—the state of the parchment, nature of the inks, palaeography—as well as image, an informal study group of historians and scientists (the Gough Map Panel) was convened in 2012 to examine the map through high resolution digital reproduction, hyperspectral analysis, three-dimensional analysis and Raman pigment analysis. Although the study is still ongoing, much that is new has been discovered, notably about the way features were marked on the map, Gough’s application to the map of a damaging reagent to render place-names readable, and the extent to which the original map (now dated toc.1400), although never completed, was nonetheless reworked on two different occasions in the fifteenth century, effectively creating two further maps. These and other findings are summarized here to encourage the further study of the map’s features that is needed before it can be fully understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several images are presented of maps of Europe and land use and of geographical models.