{"id":26332,"date":"2023-06-26T13:38:37","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=26332"},"modified":"2023-06-26T15:18:21","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T19:18:21","slug":"charting-clarity-furman-researchers-see-18th-century-maps-through-different-lenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/charting-clarity-furman-researchers-see-18th-century-maps-through-different-lenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Charting clarity: Furman researchers see 18th Century maps through different lenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Say you\u2019re planning a trip across South Carolina because you\u2019re in the market for real estate. You set out on your horse, because it\u2019s the 18th<\/sup> century, with a map that details rivers and hills and open fields for farming. But when you get into the country you see the fields are forested, and the riverbanks are settled by Indigenous tribes.<\/p>\n

Map makers 300 years ago weren\u2019t incompetent, they were commercial, according to a team of researchers at Furman University who represent a variety of perspectives, including biology, ecology, cultural anthropology, sustainability science, classical studies and ancient mapping. Their work was published in the journal Landscape Ecology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"An

An 18th Century map of Charleston Harbor, from Furman’s library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives.<\/p><\/div>\n

A lot has changed in mapmaking, but that one principle still holds true. Open Google Maps for directions to someone\u2019s house and you\u2019re bombarded with labels for Waffle House, Home Depot and Starbucks.<\/p>\n

The lesson, especially for ecologists and other scientists, is to \u201cconsider who was behind the information and what motivated them. Maps are not a neutral representation of data,\u201d said John Quinn<\/a>, an associate professor of biology, director of environmental studies and senior author of the study.<\/p>\n

Quinn began the project by studying maps of South Carolina from the 1700s housed in Furman’s Duke Library Department of Special Collections and Archives<\/a>. He saw them through a landscape ecology lens, wanting to know if they could help inform conservation goals today. He asked two Furman colleagues to join him on a research project: Chiara Palladino, an assistant professor of classics who specializes in interpreting how space is represented in ancient documents, and Karen Allen, an associate professor of sustainability science and anthropology, who was using human records to understand past landscapes and land uses.<\/p>\n

Quinn was interested in learning about forests in South Carolina\u2019s Upstate area. He was surprised that the maps didn\u2019t depict many forests, while rivers were abundant and very well marked.<\/p>\n

Palladino and Allen knew, through their respective lenses, that forests weren\u2019t included on the maps because they were less valuable than arable land, and rivers were an important channel for commerce.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaps are not objective representations of reality,\u201d Palladino said. \u201cWe look at the landscape that surrounds us and we project values onto it as we travel through it with different perspectives. What are the underlying principles?\u201d In that sense, maps can reveal more about the people who created them than the land being charted.<\/p>\n

Three maps of the same geographical area and same time period might each have different information, Palladino said<\/span>, based on the map makers\u2019 interests, values and priorities. Most often, the privileged or dominant interests prevailed. Maps of the new United States were often meant to sell land to Europeans, which is why Indigenous peoples\u2019 settlements were often left off.<\/p>\n

One map that interested Palladino was George Hunter\u2019s map of the Cherokee Country<\/a> from 1730. The map is a travel log, with notes about stops along his route. \u201cWe found specific notations about the potential of the land,\u201d and how it was good land for growing grain, Palladino said. But it wasn\u2019t. The map \u201cwas not an objective representation of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emma Grace Homoky \u201922 also worked on the project as a student during her junior year. When she moved on to a different project, Kylie Gambrill \u201923 picked it up the summer before her junior year and worked on it through her senior year. Gambrill, who double majored in anthropology and environmental science, expanded the project, ordering more maps of South Carolina, but tightening the focus to the 1700s, when Indigenous people were quickly being displaced and choosing maps that noted Indigenous settlements and land use. In the end, the group looked at 14 maps from 1711-1773.<\/p>\n

\u201cExploring the Indigenous displacement and acknowledging the colonial past of the land is difficult, but it\u2019s really worthwhile in acknowledging people,\u201d said Gambrill, who is a Furman Fellow.<\/p>\n

An undercurrent in the scientists\u2019 paper is the interdisciplinary approach to their work. They each brought a perspective to the maps that enriched the overall interpretations and added value to the project.<\/p>\n

Funding for the project was provided by the Furman Humanities Center, The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities and the Associated Colleges of the South.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maps in the 18th Century, like those today, represented commercial interests. They often left out key details, like forests and Indigenous communities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":26333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,64,37],"tags":[1074,2134,2109],"class_list":["post-26332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","category-classics","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","tag-anthropology","tag-classics","tag-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}