What is a map?
A map can be conceived as anything that represents spatial complexity. It could encompass a landscape scene or the background to a portrait. It could be cognitive, verbal, a mental construction; or tactile, gestural, and performative in function. It could deploy scientific methods or consist of lines in the sand.
Some maps were intended for public dissemination; others for private perusal. Some were printed; others exist only in manuscript. Some maps were state secrets; others aimed at propaganda; yet others were purely informational. Who sponsored the map? Was it the military, merchants, planters, the state?
The nature of maps poses existential questions.