Introduction to the History of Cartography: Framing Spatial Knowledge Production

When the British Museum acquired a 2,600-year-old clay tablet from the ruins of the ancient city of Susa in 1881, curators initially catalogued it as a mundane administrative record of land tenure. It was not until 1905 that the scholar George Smith recognized the artifact as the *Imago Mundi* (Babylonian Map of the World), the oldest surviving global spatial representation known to scholarship. Inscribed with cuneiform script and a schematic drawing of the known world, the tablet places the city of Babylon at the center of a circular ocean, surrounded by seven outer regions marked as “unreachable” or “inhabited by mythical creatures.” Far from a neutral depiction of physical space, the map encodes the Babylonian empire’s cosmological worldview, religious beliefs, and political claims to centrality in the known universe. This artifact, now housed in the British Museum (catalogue number BM 92668), encapsulates the core argument of this book: maps are never mere technical reproductions of objective reality, but materializations of spatially situated knowledge produced at the intersection of cultural values, technological capacity, and political power. This chapter establishes the conceptual, methodological, and structural foundation for the study of cartographic history, defining core terms, outlining the interdisciplinary framework that guides the field, mapping the 15-chapter arc of this volume, and providing practical research guidance for both novice and expert readers.

Core Conceptual Framework: Defining Cartography, Spatial Cognition, and the Map

To study the history of cartography rigorously, we must first move beyond the common lay definition of cartography as “the art and science of drawing maps.” This narrow definition, rooted in early 20th-century disciplinary norms, excludes the vast majority of spatial knowledge production practices that predate written mapmaking, and obscures the sociopolitical contexts that shape all spatial representations. For the purposes of this volume, we adopt a tripartite conceptual framework that links three interdependent constructs: cartography as a sociotechnical practice, spatial cognition as the cognitive foundation of spatial knowledge, and the map as a sociotechnical artifact.

First, we define cartography in its broadest sense as the full spectrum of practices involved in the production, dissemination, and use of spatial knowledge, regardless of medium or format. This definition encompasses not only printed paper maps and digital geographic information system (GIS) layers, but also oral spatial narratives, embodied navigational practices, and symbolic spatial markings such as rock art and ritual pathways. Narrowly defined, cartography refers specifically to the technical process of creating scaled, planar representations of space; this volume uses the term in its broad sense unless otherwise noted, to capture the full diversity of spatial knowledge production across human history. A key subfield of contemporary cartographic study is critical cartography, a framework developed in the 1980s by geographer John Brian Harley, which interrogates the power dynamics embedded in mapmaking practices, rejecting the longstanding myth of cartographic objectivity[^1]. Critical cartography treats maps not as neutral tools, but as rhetorical devices that construct social reality by including, excluding, and framing spatial information in ways that serve particular interests.

Second, spatial cognition refers to the mental processes by which humans acquire, store, recall, and use spatial information. Unlike generic cognitive processes, spatial cognition is inherently embodied: it is shaped by the physical and social environments in which people live, and by the technologies they use to navigate those environments. Early work on spatial cognition by psychologist Edward Tolman in the 1930s, which used maze experiments with rats to demonstrate the existence of “cognitive maps” as mental representations of space, laid the groundwork for later geographic and anthropological research on how different cultures conceptualize and represent space[^2]. For example, many Indigenous Australian groups navigate vast tracts of arid land using songlines (also called dreaming tracks), oral narratives that encode spatial information through song, dance, and story, rather than through scaled drawings. A songline might describe a sequence of landmarks, water sources, and ceremonial sites, with specific melodic patterns corresponding to specific geographic features; only people who have been initiated into the group’s cultural knowledge can interpret the songline correctly. This form of spatial cognition is not “less advanced” than paper map reading, but operates on a different set of technological and cultural assumptions, and serves different social functions, including the transmission of cultural knowledge and the management of land resources. The diversity of spatial cognition across cultures is a core theme of this volume, as it challenges the assumption that Western-style scaled maps are the only “legitimate” form of spatial representation.

The third core construct is the map as a sociotechnical artifact, a framework that integrates the social and technical dimensions of all spatial representations. A sociotechnical artifact is an object or practice that cannot be understood by analyzing its technical properties alone, because its meaning and function are co-produced by social, cultural, and political contexts. For example, the Mercator projection, developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, is a technical innovation that preserves angle and shape, making it extremely useful for marine navigation, as straight lines on a Mercator map correspond to constant compass bearings. But the projection’s social impact is equally significant: it distorts the size of landmasses at high latitudes, making Europe and North America appear far larger than they are in reality, and Africa appear far smaller. This distortion was not an accidental byproduct of the projection’s technical design, but aligned with the ideological goals of 16th-century European colonialism, which sought to frame European powers as geographically and civilizationally dominant. A 2021 study of web mapping platforms found that 82% of default base maps still use the Mercator projection, perpetuating these distorted spatial hierarchies for billions of global users[^3]. This example illustrates that the technical properties of a map cannot be separated from the social contexts of its production and use.

To visualize the relationship between these three constructs, we can model spatial knowledge production as a cyclical process: ```mermaid graph TD A[Spatial Cognition<br/>(Embodied, cultural, technological)] --> B[Cartographic Practice<br/>(Technical skill, social demand, political mandate)] B --> C[Map Artifact<br/>(Material/digital carrier of spatial knowledge)] C --> D[Social Use<br/>(Navigation, governance, propaganda, identity formation)] D --> A ``` This model makes clear that maps are not static products, but active participants in the ongoing production of spatial knowledge: the way a map is used shapes future spatial cognition, which in turn shapes future cartographic practice.

> 📌 Digital Edition Sidebar: Core Concept Glossary > All key terms in this chapter are hyperlinked to the book’s embedded, peer-reviewed glossary. For example, clicking the term *sociotechnical artifact* will open a pop-up with extended definitions, primary source excerpts from John Brian Harley’s foundational essays, and a link to a 10-minute video lecture on the history of critical cartography. The glossary is also available as a downloadable PDF for offline use.

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Cartographic History Research

Cartographic history is not a subfield of any single discipline, but a cross-cutting field that integrates perspectives from g