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.

Typology

This project categorizes the maps into the following types based on function and use:

  1. an overall view of the entire basin, often as part of a larger atlas;
  2. an outline of an individual island or territory;
  3. a marine chart;
  4. an urban plan;
  5. a military siege or naval engagement;
  6. a cadastral plat;
  7. and, finally, a state-sponsored, topographic survey.

These categories impose some artificial boundaries; a number of maps mix genres, but it is a useful first step to group them according to primary function and use.