History Of Cartography Research Articles

Места обитания аборигенного населения Кузнецкого уезда в XVIII в. по картографическим источникам

Based on the analysis of ancient maps with the involvement of a wide range of written sources, the article attempts to conduct a spatial reconstruction of the location of native Turkic peoples’ habitats in the Upper Ob region. The author traced the changes of information about the yasak volosts of the Kuznetsk district for 1710–1760s . The study of maps shows that during the 18th century information about the places of residence of the Turkic peoples became more and more fragmentary, and by the 1770s almost disappeared. Despite the fragmentation information, the presence of distortion in the names and inaccuracies in localization of objects, we have managed to identify the habitats of more than 50 ethnic groups on the modern topographic basis, and reproduce the boundaries of the yasak volosts of mid-century

Сучасні технології дослідження старовинних карт

Сучасні технології дослідження старовинних карт

A Technique to Reconstruct Nizhniy Novgorod Land Survey Plan and Borders in 1784 Based on Special Geodetic Software

A present-day task of historical GIS is to geotag ancient maps within еру modern coordinate system. These maps are sure to have many inaccuracies. In this regard, there is a need to develop algorithms accounting for these inaccuracies and allowing one to position sources with the smallest deformations and drawbacks. This task is also relevant for Russian plans of the General Survey. Their peculiarity is that they have accurate geodetic characteristics of plots. The research subject is a set of Nizhny Novgorod plans of the late 18th сentury which were the basis for a technique used to reconstruct the city borders and land survey plans. The research methodology is based on the historicism principal, systematicity and objectivity. The authors emphasize the role of statistical methods and apply specifically historical (historical and typological as well as historical and genetic) methods, the geodetic method to process and equalize transit traverse, modeling and cartometry. The research novelty is determined by the algorithm of city borders and historical land survey plans reconstruction, technological solutions for studying the object by means of geodetic programs, new data on land management and cartographic materials based on land management results in the specific region of Russia. The main conclusions are the positioned borders of Nizhny Novgorod in the conditional coordinate system. It was found that transit traverses of plots studied had significant angle linear errors. For settlement plots they are 3°29' and 1/31 and for pasture plots they are 2°49' and 1/80. For Blagoveshchenskiy Monastery they are 0°37’and 1/139. A raster land survey plan of Nizhny Novgorod has been made. It can be further used for geotagging and creating historical GIS.

Ephemeral rollover points and clinothem evolution in the modern Po Delta based on repeated bathymetric surveys

AbstractReconstructions of ancient delta systems rely typically on a two‐dimensional (2D) view of prograding clinothems but may miss their three‐dimensional (3D) stratigraphic complexity which can, instead, be best documented on modern delta systems by integrating high‐resolution geophysical data, historical cartography, core data and geomorphological reconstructions offshore. We quantitatively compare three precisely positioned, high‐resolution multi‐beam bathymetry maps in the delta front and pro delta sectors (0.3 to 10 m water depth) of Po di Pila, the most active of the modern Po Delta five branches. By investigating the detailed morphology of the prograding modern Po Delta, we shed new light on the mechanisms that control the topset to foreset transition in clinothems and show the temporal and spatial complexity of a delta and its pro delta slope, under the impact of oceanographic processes. This study documents the ephemeral nature of the rollover point at the transition between sandy topset (fluvial, delta plain to mouth‐bar) and muddy seaward‐dipping foreset deposits advancing, in this case, in >20 m of water depth. Three multibeam surveys, acquired between 2013 and 2016, document the complexity in space and time of the topset and foreset regions and their related morphology, a diagnostic feature that could not be appreciated using solely 2D, even very high‐resolution, seismic profiles. In addition, the comparison of bathymetric surveys gathered with one‐year lapses shows the migration of subaqueous sand dunes on the clinothem topset, the formation of ephemeral cut‐and‐fill features at the rollover point (few m below mean sea level), the presence of collapse depressions derived by sagging of sediments and fluid expulsion (possibly induced by storm waves) on the foreset, and splays of sand likely reflecting gravity flows on the lower foreset. Though the modern Po Delta is anthropogenic in many respects, its subaqueous clinothem can be studied as a scale model for ancient clinothems that are less resolved geometrically and far less constrained chronologically.

Žemaitijos vardas senuosiuose žemėlapiuose: formos ir transformacijos | Žemaitija on Ancient Maps: Forms and Transformations of its Name

The first written mention in historical sources of the name of Žemaitija (or Samogitia), the west Lithuanian region, is well-known. In 1219, the Hypatian Codex described how Žemaitijan dukes, along with Lithuanian dukes, made peace with Volhynia. Much less is known about the emergence of the name of Žemaitija on ancient maps, despite the fact that old cartography often provides the first records of various geographical, socio-cultural and socio-economic phenomena. The article not only tries to trace the first appearance of the name Samogitia on maps, but also discusses its various forms and transformations, explaining the motives behind choices of particular forms of the name. The author examines nearly all the maps created before the early 19th century as cartographic sources. For the classification of this volume of material, she uses the concept of the three-stage cartographic depiction of Lithuania proposed by Vaclovas Chomskis. More than 200 maps of different scales and representing different areas, including Lithuania, Lithuania and neighbouring countries, Lithuania and Poland, Europe, Prussia, etc, were researched in order to track the use of different names for Žemaitija.

HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS OF RESEARCH THE PAST OF CHERNOMORIAN AND KUBAN COSSACKS (matters of cartographic reconstruction)

The article explores the geographical aspects of the history of the Chernomorian and Kuban Cossacks and their display by means of historical cartography. There are examples of errors occurring due to the researchers' inability to use methods of historical geography and cartography are given. The author draws attention to the mistakes of some Ukrainian historical atlases and Russian publications. The article contains samples of authors maps, which allowed to raise to a new level the study of administrative territorial division, geography and topography of the settlements of the Kuban region, the Holodomor of 1932-1933 and some other problems of regional history.

Maps of the Moon

Abstract When does a depiction of the moon become a lunar map? This essay addresses this question from theoretical and historical standpoints. It is argued that moon maps are of crucial importance to the history of cartography, for they challenge established notions of what is a map, how it functions, what are its purposes, and what kind of power it embodies and performs. The work also shows how terrestrial cartography has shaped the history of lunar mapping since the seventeenth century, through visual and nomenclature conventions, the cultural currency of maps, mapmakers’ social standing, and data-gathering and projection practices. It further demonstrates that lunar cartography has also been organized by an internal principle that is born of the fundamental problem of how to create static map spaces capable of representing a referent that is constantly changing to our eyes, as is the visible face of the moon. It is suggested that moon maps may be classed on three broad categories, according to the kinds of solutions for this representational problem that have been devised over the last 400 years.

Mapmaking in the home and printing house: women and cartography in late imperial Russia

The history of cartography in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire has been dominated by accounts of the military, academic establishments and elite male intellectuals. This article seeks to provide a corrective to this tendency by highlighting the involvement of women in cartography in the home and print workshops. Drawing on previously unexamined archival sources, the article traces the role of women in the process of making the Ethnological-Geographical Atlas of Present and Prehistoric Latvia (1892), from Martha Bielenstein’s drawing of the manuscript maps in the Bielenstein family home in the Baltic provinces to the female print workers at A. Il’in’s Cartographic Establishment in St. Petersburg. The article builds on recent research on women and cartography to argue that mapmaking was a far more widespread socioeconomic activity in imperial Russia than previously thought and permeated family and working lives. The research findings contribute to our knowledge of the impact of traditional gender roles on cartographic labour and geographies of map production in late imperial Russia.

Historical cartography of Muscovy: symbols and emblems

The article is devoted to the historical cartography of Moscow kingdom of the 16- 17th centuries and symbolic emblematic designation of Muscovy and adjacent territories. Four types of heraldic emblems were revealed. Some of them have various own versions. The rider was used by cartographers only in the 16th century. In the earliest version, the rider had a bow. The double-headed eagle was used since 1610. The original emblem of the beginning of the 16th century was an image of a lion and a dragon. The open gate was used on some maps since the second half of the 16th century until the end of the 17th century. The emblem is connected with ancient ideas of the northern peoples who were locked up by Alexander the Great with the help of the gates of the northern peoples identified with the peoples of Gog and Magog in the Christian tradition.

Have Historical Land Use/Land Cover Changes Triggered a Fire Regime Shift in Central Spain?

Fire is one of the main disturbance factors shaping the landscape, and landscape is a key driver of fire behavior. Considering the role played by land use and land cover (LULC) changes as the main driver of landscape dynamics, the aim of this study was to calculate and analyze (i) the real impact of fire on LULC changes and (ii) how these LULC changes were influencing the fire regime. We used methods of historical geography and socio-spatial systemic analysis for reconstructing and assessing the LULC change and fire history in six case studies in the Central Mountain System (Spain) from archival documentary sources and historical cartography. The main result is an accurate dataset of fire records from 1497 to 2013 and a set of LULC maps for three time points (1890s–1930s, 1956–1957, and the 2000s). We have shown the nonlinear evolution of the fire regime and the importance of the local scale when assessing the interaction of landscape dynamics and fire regime variation. Our findings suggest that LULC trends have been the main influencing factor of fire regime variation in Central Spain since the mid-19th century.

Past and present: cartographic history of Famagusta

Abstract The island of Cyprus has been occupied by various powers, during which time the historical and cultural contexts of the main cities of the island have changed and left behind material traces. One of these cities is the main port city of the island Famagusta, where the various ruling powers affected its fabric and the different historic structures of the city combine with modern in the contemporary city. These multicultural structures and historical layers can be followed on the maps. The aim of this paper is to follow the changing urban fabric of Famagusta by examining the selected maps from the 16th century to modern times. How much the city undergoes spatial alteration and how much of the historical structure and developments can be followed on the cartographic records? The paper will question the perspective of the cartographers towards Famagusta and their priorities in depicting this multicultural city.

Structure-from-Motion (SFM) Photogrammetry as a Non-Invasive Methodology to Digitalize Historical Documents: A Highly Flexible and Low-Cost Approach?

Historical documents represent a significant part of the world cultural heritage and need to be preserved from physical deformation due to ageing. The restoration of fragile documents requires economic resources that are often limited to only preserve the integrity of exceptional and highly valuable historical records. On the other hand, regeneration of ancient documents in digital form is a useful way to preserve them regardless of the material they are made of. In addition, the digitization of historical cartography allows creating a valuable dataset for a variety of GIS applications as well as spatial and landscape studies. Nonetheless, historical maps are usually deformed, and a contact-scanning process could damage them because this method requires planar positioning of the map. In this regard, photogrammetry has been used successfully as a non-invasive method to digitize historical documentation. The purpose of this research is to assess a low-cost and highly flexible strategy to digitize historical maps and documents through digital photogrammetry using low-cost commercial off-the-shelf sensors. This methodology allows training a wider audience of cultural heritage operators in digitizing historic records with a millimeter-level accuracy.

Research on Geographical Positioning of Ancient Map

Research on Geographical Positioning of Ancient Map

Mapping a Nation: Daniel Carter Beard’s Time as a Surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company

Abstract. Fire insurance maps produced by the American firm the Sanborn Map Company have long served as cartographic guides to understanding the history of urban America. Primarily used by cultural and historical geographers, historians, historic preservationists, and environmental consultants; historians of cartography have little explored the history of this company. While this scholarship has addressed various facets of Sanborn’s history (Ristow, 1968), no scholarly piece has explored the lived experience of being a Sanborn surveyor. This lack of scholarship comes not from any significant oversight but rather from the fact that the contributions of most Sanborn surveyors were anonymous and little recorded on the maps themselves. Moreover, the company itself has done little to save its own history, thus little is known of their individual stories and experiences. The exception to this is perhaps the most famous Sanborn surveyor of all: Daniel Carter Beard.Over the course of his nine-decade life, Daniel Carter Beard held several prominent positions including the co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America and the lead illustrator for many of Mark Twain’s novels. However, he got his start as a surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company in the 1870s, just a few years after its founding. His papers, housed at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, includes a variety of ephemera from his time with the Sanborn Map Company.Trained in civil engineering, Beard got his start as a surveyor for the Cincinnati (Ohio) Office of Platting Commission, creating the first official plat map for the city. He was hired by Sanborn in 1874 and served as a surveyor until 1878, traveling extensively over the eastern half of the United States, parlaying his skills into creating fire insurance maps for Sanborn. Thus, this paper speaks to two main themes. The first theme traces the route of Beard during his early years with the company across the eastern half of the United States, documenting both the places he visited and the challenges he faced as a Sanborn surveyor. The second theme, interwoven through the paper, is an analysis of the innerworkings of Sanborn’s administrative structure and its relationship with the larger fire insurance market during the 1870s. Altogether, these documents present unique insight into the organization of the Sanborn Map Company and how it produced its maps during the second-half of the 19th century.

How to read ʽEmotional Cartographiesʼ: Rethinking (Carto)graphic Representation and Semantics

Abstract. The emotions, in its broadest sense, have been the subject of anthropological, sociological, and cultural studies among geographers. The “mapping impulse” has been also an essential element and a major force in many disciplines and fields.Historically, the mapping has imposed not only physical but also imagined boundaries, imposing “the power-knowledge” relations on the landscape and its communities. At the same time, looking at the history of cartography, the visual vocabulary of conventional maps has been used to interpret various facets of the human psyche, for instance in the case of the late Renaissance “sentimental cartography”.The concept of 'Emotional Geographies' has been adopted by geographers as 'a concern with the spatiality and temporality of emotions' (Davidson J, 2007). Hence, emotions have been acknowledged not as individualized, but as intersubjective – social and cultural.Although the geospatial technologies have acquired more humanized characteristics since the mid 1990‘s (Pickles, 1995), such as mapping feelings (Pocock, D. 1984) and emotional responses to space (Gartner, 2012), the cartography has been facing challenges regarding of data collection and representation of emotions (Griffin & McQuoid, 2012). Therefore, little cartographic efforts have been made in that direction due to the challenges in data collection and representation of emotions. (Griffin & McQuoid, 2012).As such, “turned” not only by the affective topographic or non-spatial elements, but also the critical theory, “Emotional Mapping”, as an additional concept in cartography, goes beyond the georeferenced emotional states in a certain geographic area. This reflexive methodology combines technology, science and art, theory and practice, and, as Nold argues, enables “Reflection-In-Action”, and new social relations. But, the way in which it creates a tangible vision of places as a dense multiplicity of personal sensations, which we are not normally aware of, is its most significant aspect (Nold, 2009). Further to new psychology-based approaches to affect and emotion, and how maps make us feel (Griffin & McQuoid, 2012), alternative approaches from cartography, social theory and art, demonstrate how maps are meaningful. In such scholarship environment, the co-creation of “Emotional Mapping” has a potential by drawing on “Emotional Cartography” techniques, and exploring the ways in which emotional responses might be sensed, captured, represented, analysed, and used in various cross-disciplinary projects.

From historical cartography to historical mapping: digital edition of Gaul/Raczynski topographic map of Greater Poland (1807–1812)

Abstract. The aim of the author is to present and discuss methodological problems related to the development of old maps’ digital editions on the example of the so called Gaul/Raczyński topographic map – a perfect case providing the whole catalogue of problems related to archival maps’ representation in the digital form. Today, we can observe an increasing interest in spatial and digital humanities, as well as more frequent old and historical maps dissemination via web services. However, consistent methods of their depiction in the digital manner have not yet been developed. The aim of the project is not only to develop such a method, but also to indicate its perspectives and constraints in the context of its future application among the whole array of old maps. The development of map’s digital edition allows the full use of such data in historical and geographical studies.

La cartografía histórica y el estudio de los paisajes culturales marítimos. Aplicación al caso de la Bahía de Cádiz.

In this survey we present two cases that perfectly exemplify the usefulness of the application of the study of historical cartography for the analysis of maritime cultural landscapes. This is possible thanks to the interrelation and comparative studies of the data provided by the cartographic documents through the Geografic Information Sistems

Towards a Federated List of Versioned Georeferenced Site Names: A local experience

The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (MCNB) holds a collection of ca. 130,000 digitally registered zoological specimens collected around the world and dating from 1852 to the present. Specimens are shared between non-arthropod invertebrates (32% of the collection), arthropod invertebrates (39%) and vertebrates (29%). The museum recognizes georeferencing as a crucial process for mobilising its collections into digitally accessible information and has provisioned resources in an ongoing georeferencing process for more than 10 years. The aim of this poster is to show how a bottom-up model benefits the georeferencing work. Site names as written by collectors in specimen tags need to be converted into spatial coordinates with precision and uncertainty information. In order to guide this process, the research community has provided a set of georeferencing protocols and recommendations which start with the physical tagged specimen and end with a digital record in a public biodiversity database. In addition, having direct knowledge of the territory where the tagged locality lies and access to the most precise local cartography helps to ensure that a high quality georeferenced digital record can be created. Many localities described in specimen tags carry place names which cannot be found or correctly derived from small scale maps or digital map resources such as Google Maps. Often, it is necessary to have access to more locally detailed cartography and, sometimes, historical cartography. Therefore, we recommend that this is added to existing protocols, and that institutions from different geographical areas to pull together their efforts in order to create a federated list of georeferenced site names. This would be a more efficient strategy of generating better quality gazetteers, streamlining efforts and making more efficient use of the collective resources since many tagged site names are the same for different specimens across multiple collections. The georeferencing process is ultimately dependent on the cartography available to the georeferencer at the moment of converting the tagged collection event into a digital record. A georeference record may be subject to future improvements in future georeferencing revisions. Newly available cartography or methods of reporting location and uncertainty may lead to a revision of any given georeferenced record. Thus, any federated databasing effort to list georeferenced site names should include versioning capabilities. In order to address the need to incorporate expert knowledge into georeferecing efforts, alongside versioning site names, the MCNB has developed a software platform tool. This platform, called Georef, is implemented as a web application with storage, querying, editing and visualizing capabilities for both site names and the cartographic resources used in the georeferencing process. Georef is now also used by other institutions from the Western Mediterranean basin with which MCNB shares data and local knowledge. A public API has been developed for accessing the georeferenced sites and to support a crowd-sourced tool which allows the public to comment and propose edits to location data. Ultimately, this tool improves the quality of the georeferencing and research using these data.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ST. PETERSBURG AGGLOMERATION IN THE XIX - EARLY XX CENTURY

The relevance of the topic of the article is due to the beginning of the development program for the development of the largest St. Petersburg agglomeration in north-western Russia for the next 15-20 years (up to the 2030s). The specific goal of the article was to study the third, most mature stage of development of the metropolitan St. Petersburg agglomeration in 1801-1916. (taking into account the peculiarities of the formation of agglomeration at the previous stages). In the study of this topic, an integrated urban planning-landscape, functional and socio-economic analysis was used, based on a parallel study of archival materials and data of historical cartography. The main results were the conclusions that during the XIX - early XX centuries. the purposeful crystallization of the grand agglomeration was carried out, which included three belts: “external”, “middle”, “near” (as zones of intensive agglomeration), spatially extending from Yaroslavl to Riga. The near zone of agglomeration (zone of intensive agglomeration) united the belt zone (around St. Petersburg and the largest settlements and complexes), linear (along radial and ring highways) and nodal (around individual large settlements) constructions, extending in the latitudinal direction from the estuary of the r. Syasi to Narva and Ivangorod, and in the meridian direction - from the coast of the Gulf of Finland from Ino to the city of Luga. As part of this agglomeration, four subagglomerations were already being formed. This variant of the spatial formation and unique structuring of the metropolitan St. Petersburg agglomeration with the parallel development of subagglomerations is nonstandard for the world history of urban planning. The article materials can be useful both for historians of urban planning and for modern urbanists.

Joaquim Romero Magalhães and the History of Luso-Brazilian Cartography

EnglishThe History of Portuguese Cartography underwent strong development during the Estado Novo, within a framework of nationalist historiography, supporting colonial postulates. The old charts were presented as evidence of the leading role of Portuguese science during the Renaissance, and as proof of the primacy of the Portuguese geographic discoveries and the rights of colonial occupation and exploration of different territories. With the democratic regime, in the early 1990s, the future of this field of knowledge in Portugal was not quite auspicious. Only two small study groups interested in the History of Cartography coexisted at the University of Lisbon and at the Institute for Tropical Scientific Research. The studies and the diffusion of the History of Luso-Brazilian cartography gathered momentum in Portugal from the mid-1990s, with the presence of Joaquim Romero Magalhaes (1942-2018) at the Comissao Nacional para as Comemoracoes dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, as Commissioner (1999-2002). His mission was to carry out the challenging task of “commemorating” the official arrival of the Portuguese navigators to South America. The “discovery of Brazil” and the relation between Portugal and Brazil, not only in the colonial period but also since the independence of that territory in 1822 to the present, were the major subjects for the organisation of great exhibitions, for publishing historical research works and primary sources, for granting scholarships, for the development of research projects, for organizing scientific meetings, for providing assistance to research centres. Under his supervision old maps and charts were always present in these events and works. portuguesA Historia da Cartografia Portuguesa conheceu um periodo de franco desenvolvimento durante o Estado Novo, no quadro de uma historiografia nacionalista e defensora dos principios coloniais. Os mapas antigos foram analisados como provas do papel de vanguarda da ciencia portuguesa nos seculos XV e XVI, como testemunhos da prioridade dos descobrimentos portugueses e dos direitos de ocupacao e exploracao colonial de territorios africanos, americanos e asiaticos. Na sequencia da implantacao do regime democratico, no inicio da decada de 1990, a situacao da Historia da Cartografia em Portugal, nao era a mais auspiciosa. Apenas dois pequenos grupos de investigadores se interessavam pelo tema, na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa e no Instituto de Investigacao Cientifica Tropical. Os estudos e a divulgacao da Historia da Cartografia Luso-Brasileira ganharam um novo impulso, com a presenca de Joaquim Romero Magalhaes na Comissao Nacional para as Comemoracoes dos Descobrimentos Portugueses (1996-2002). A principal missao era “comemorar” a chegada oficial dos navegadores portugueses a America do Sul. O “achamento do Brasil” e a relacao entre Portugal e o Brasil, nao so no periodo colonial mas tambem desde a independencia do territorio, foram os grandes temas para a organizacao de exposicoes, edicoes de fontes e estudos historicos, concessao de bolsas de estudo, estabelecimento de projetos de investigacao, organizacao de reunioes cientificas, apoio a centros de investigacao e a instituicoes academicas e culturais. Sob a coordenacao de Romero Magalhaes, em muitas destas realizacoes estiveram presentes os mapas antigos, com um destacado papel.