ABSTRACT
Maps as visual renderings have the same capacity for multiple retellings, each with their own voice and authority. From the time of the very first maps, there were innumerable idiosyncratic flourishes that revealed the style and the skill of the cartographer in dialogue with a perceived audience. In many parts of the world, archaeological remains have been subsumed to modern developments, so that the physical map is the only record of the palimpsest of the past. Prior to the visual persuasion of photography, maps were perhaps the most immediate and comprehensive form of documentation and communication. Maps of possession identify and outline the boundaries of territory, while maps of waypoints highlight that which is not to be missed in the perambulations of the countryside. Maps provide real images of imaginary places from the foreign country that is the past, and map-makers signal this reality through many different types of sign-making, ranging from shading and font to abbreviations of iconography.
