Representing Two Dimensions

Maps are taken here as graphic representations in which space within the image corresponds to space in the real world. More abstract data graphics in which image space corresponds to other aspects of the real world are rare, but mapping better attests along a spectrum from plans of buildings or neighborhoods (apparently common) to rarer regional and even world maps. Like other devices discussed in the book, maps in general are used in a limited number of contexts (e.g., construction, fiscality), and individual instances are ruthlessly stripped of information not needed for their individual purpose. Few if any of our surviving examples are rigorously to scale, and so some scholars have rejected their identification as maps at all. In fact, while individual approaches are distinct, they nonetheless show family resemblances by drawing differentially from more or less the same pool of strategies. In combination, these do not determine a single spatial reading for any given work of map, but they constrain the range of plausible approximations. If the direct evidence leads us to this non-anachronistic notion of mapping, then indirect evidence suggests cartography would have been important in some additional contexts, as well.