Mapping Out Maps

Some years ago, when I was putting together the geographical layout for my Children of the Desert series, I went down a rabbit hole about maps. The resulting binder of printouts, index cards, and notes eventually got buried in a box under other boxes and forgotten about. During a recent closet overhaul, I rediscovered the binder – and the timing couldn’t have been better, because I was already all fired up from my work on old garden maps. I decided that I would go through the binder, check to see if all the web sites are still around, check to see if the books are available in ebook form these days, and generally kick the dust off to see what I had.

… it’s turning out to be a rather larger project than I expected. I have a lot of notes, and I still adore diving down research rabbit holes. I spent a hour tracking down information about one line — on one index card — before I caught myself.

So. In order to keep myself at least semi on track, and to provide you with interesting content along the way, here’s the beginning of a rambling journey through all things map.

First up, take a look at “The Map Shapes the Food Story”, a thought-provoking Substack post that looks at the impact of maps, the wild variety of forms they can take, the interaction between map and reader, and has a whole bunch of links for you to chase down.

For folks who love downloading libraries of free PDFs, here’s a set, over on the University of Chicago’s site, of “The History of Cartography” series for you to gather up. (It’s a lot of files. A lot.)

From the site: “The series is the starting point for anyone interested in how people have produced and consumed maps around the globe and throughout human history.”

U of C’s site can be a huge, huge time sink all on its own, so be warned, ye who venture there… set a timer.

Academic-minded readers will enjoy “Rethinking maps from a more than human perspective”, which, again, has a downloadable pdf available.

That’s enough for a few hours of wandering. Remember to bring water along… it can get dry out there.