Early Mapping of the Material

It is difficult to identify when maps, as a type of representation of space, became a distinct set of tools, as maps have existed since ancient times, occupying various social roles. Telling is how during the Middle Ages, there was no specific word for map, instead people used what would be translated as ‘diagram’ or ‘picture’ (Harvey 7). Maps were “pictures of landscape, of regions or of continents, or they were diagrams setting out spatial relationship in graphic form just as they might set out other relationships–administrative, philosophical, theological” (ibid). Thus, instead of accurately depicting a location, medieval maps represented space in terms of what it was used for, the social action that would occupy that location. Thus, the map gave form to the materiality of the everyday experience, showing what material actions would take place in that specific place. Maps illustrated the materiality of everyday living; they represented buildings, animals, people, activities. Medieval maps told stories. In The History of Cartography, Harley and Woodward write: “Maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world” (quoted in Talbert, Introduction, 11). Early maps helped present the spatial aspects of events, ideas, and things in the environment. But as mapping became a tool for science and navigation, the depictions of materiality were erased from the map, in favor of a more ‘objective’ representation.