Editing Maps: A Method for Historical Cartography

Abstract

Cartography1The editing of verbal historical sources in America has a long tradition, culminating in what Morgan has called "total editing," in projects like The Papers of ThomasJefferson and The Adams Papers.The editing of old maps, however, is a very new field.When the staff of the Atlas of Early American History began to edit the eighteenth-century city plans that served as the basis for the "Cities" section of the book, they had no models of edited maps to follow.2Considering that edited verbal documents can tell so much about the past, it is surprising that few historians have tried to edit old maps.Before the publication of the Atlas five methods were used to depict historical situations cartographically: facsimiles; facsimiles with additions; backdated modern base maps with historical data added; unchanged modern base maps with historical data added; and historical maps compiled from evidence contemporaneous with or slightly more recent than the date of the situation.

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