Abstract
This article reflects on the construction of Curt Nimuendajú's “Ethno-historical map”, an exhaustive work that sought to map the native groups of South America. This map was one of the most widely-used representations by researchers since its creation in 1944. The theoretical framework adopted in this paper stresses maps as rhetorical constructs that should be read as texts. The article also discusses the limits and possibilities of a visual vocabulary to understand explicit and implicit theoretical and methodological decisions in cartography. Digital cartography will be employed to bring out the differences between what the author of the project intended and what was presented in the "Ethno-historical map". The text starts with a description of the work and its most evident options, showing a relative selectivity in Nimuendajú's choices. In the last part, technical procedures will be abandoned to interpret the results considering the new critical cartography and ethno-geography positions.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to discuss the cartographic representation of indigenous groups, and to do so, we will explore the choices made by Curt Nimuendajú, author of the “Ethno-historical Map”, who exhaustively sought to locate the main native groups in South America
Harley was concerned with the naturalized way maps were usually consumed in a context of widespread discussion of social theories. This naturalization appeared both in the technical character of cartography, which, according to the author, suffered from an “ontological schizophrenia” and in the way maps were interpreted epistemologically, since maps were usually interpreted in a mild way, with few criticisms of the composition of their epistemic nature, forming a consolidated consensus of what a map was
There is a great debate about the technicism present in these tools, and even Nimuendajú’s map could be accused in this direction, since it did, analogically, the same thing that is done nowadays: cross data from various sources in different layers of information in a defined spatial context
Summary
The purpose of this article is to discuss the cartographic representation of indigenous groups, and to do so, we will explore the choices made by Curt Nimuendajú, author of the “Ethno-historical Map”, who exhaustively sought to locate the main native groups in South America. His goal was to offer an alternative reading to the maps This new possible interpretation contrasted with existing ones and embraced a criticism towards the notion of reality and representation guided by normative cartographic thinking, guided by a positivist scientification, more concerned with the norms and techniques of cartography. His contribution, comes with the suggestion of going beyond the rules that govern the universe of maps, based on social theories, and trying to understand them as products arising from a context that overrides the normalization of cartography and social elements that influence that. The ideas presented by Harley (1989) come as a counterpoint to the notion that has been created of how a map is constituted, of how it would be the correct way to prepare and interpret it and of the naturalization that has been consolidated
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