Education Outreach Newsletter Cartography Corneroshermaps.org/sites/default/files/OMLNewsletterFallWinter2014.pdf · maps thematically, according to the different ways in which people

Education Outreach NewsletterCartography Corner

FALL / WINTER 2014

WWW.OSHERMAPS.ORG/EDUCATION-K12 314 FOREST AVENUE, PORTLAND

Current Exhibition

This exhibition approaches the complex phenomenon of hand-drawn maps thematically, according to the different ways in which people conceptualize the world around them. By examining world and regional mapping, property mapping, mapping of places and landscapes, and marine mapping, it explores some of the ways in which precise needs have led people to make and use manuscript maps, at times even

copying from and repurposing printed maps.

Upcoming Exhibitions

Charting the Land of Flowers

Fall 2015 Traveling Exhibition

originating at Tampa Bay History Center in Florida.

Women in Cartography

Spring-Summer 2015 Guest Curator:

Alice Hudson, former chief of the Map Division, New York Public Library

OCTOBER 16, 2014 - FEBRUARY 26, 2015

Mary Van Schaack, 1811 (LOC)

Asher & Adams, Florida, 1874 (OML)

For millennia, all maps were manuscripts. They were chiseled in stone, painted on wood or animal skins, and inscribed in soft clay tablets that were then baked for posterity. Eventually, in twelfth-century China and fifteenth-century Europe, craftsmen began to ink up the surface of maps that had been carved into wood blocks and to impress the image onto sheets of paper. The age of map printing had begun. This does not mean that people stopped making maps by hand, other than as designs for printed works. Manuscript mapping has continued to the present. Indeed, most of the works on display in this exhibition were made after 1800 and the development of the “public sphere” with its expectations that all maps and books are printed as a matter of course. Rather, the drawing of maps by hand has flourished in situations where the profusion of printed maps is inappropriate: when people are acting privately, or when privacy is required, or when others need to be excluded from access to the maps. Again, hand-drawn maps demand our attention as ways to investigate and understand individuals in the past.

Hand-drawn maps are works of art, both in the modern sense of aesthetic design and in the older sense of craft and skill. Individuals make them at particular moments. Also known as manuscripts — from the Latin for written (script) by hand (manu) — hand-drawn maps are, by definition, unique and rare. Just as hand-drawn maps are works made by individuals, the motives behind them are equally personal.

Hand-drawn maps thus give us not only a direct and tangible link to past cultures and societies but more particularly an immediate connection with the very individuals who made, held, and used them.

To see the full exhibition, please visit the exhibition web site at:

http://www.oshermaps.org/exhibitions/hand-drawn-map


Cartography Corner: K-12 Education Outreach Newsletter

Educational Resource HighlightThe OML Outreach team is always working to develop new, exciting lessons and activities! Map-based board games are some of our favorite group activities. Our newest board game uses a map showing Captain Mowatt’s attack on Portland, or “Falmouth Neck,” during the Revolutionary War. Students must work together to put out the fires in 18th-century Falmouth Neck’s important buildings, and in doing so, learn about the people and places of Portland’s past.

Sekisui Nagakubo. Chikyu Bankoku Sankai Yochi Zenzu (1821). OS-1821-4

Manuscript map of

the United States

drawn by eleven year

old Margaret Taft in 1830 at Uxbridge

Academy.OS-1830-30

The Art of the Hand Drawn Map

Osher Map Library offers free tutorial sessions on accessing and using our resources for K-12 educators. Included in these 90 minute sessions are:

• a tour of OML’s facilities• a demonstration of online

digital resources and education materials

• a viewing of our current exhibition• a tour of our antique globes

Offsite sessions are also offered for groups unable or not wishing to travel, focusing on online digital resources and downloadable educational materials. These can be conducted at a school or organization within sixty miles from Portland at no cost. Offsite sessions last roughly 30 minutes and require internet access and a projector.

Recommended for in-service days or departmental meetings.

MHS/OML Combined Field Trips

Interested in a combination field trip to OML and MHS? Send us an email to find out more about pricing and

[email protected]

ProfessionalDevelopment


becoming a map publisher in his late sixties. He envisioned Britannia as the first of three volumes embracing the entire geography of England but his death prevented the completion of the other two volumes. To make Britannia, Ogilby commissioned several survey crews to measure distances along each route. Besides providing the first systematic documentations of British roads, Britannia is important for its consistent use of the statute English mile of 1,609m (1,760 yards, as defined in 1593) and abandoned the wide variety of customary miles previously used to record road distances and that varied in length from 1,500m to 2,100m (Zupko 1985). The result was to popularize the statute mile in English life (Hyde 1985, 1).

This particular map depicts the route from the city of York, in northeastern England, in the lower-left corner, to the city of Lancaster, in northwest England, in the upper-right corner. The map organized the route by representing the linear sequence of landmarks and other geographical features ~ such as churches, manor houses, and hills (especially in this map, as the road crosses the Pennines) ~ together with the measured mileages in between. Because the road is forced to fit linear strips, Ogilby added compass roses to indicate the road’s changing direction (Harley 1970, xv).

Although Britannia was a cumbersome volume that was impractical for actual travel, its maps proved so useful to navigating the complex road networks of England and Wales that many owners of the Atlas did not hesitate to cut out the relevant map before heading out on their journey (Van Eerde 1976, 137). In our modern world, dominated by GPS and a well-organized system of paved roads and highways, it is easy to overlook how innovative Britannia was for travelers in late seventeenth century. Britannia is an early milestone in navigation that eventually culminated in the current well of easy navigational information that we currently have today.

Further Reading:

Harley, J. B. 1970. “Bibliographical Note.” In John Ogilby, Britannia, London 1675, v-xxxi. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. [OML facsimiles G1808 .O3 1970]

Hyde, Ralph. 1985. John Ogilby (1600-1675), Cosmographer to the King and Mapmaker Extraordinary. London: s.n. [OML reference GA793.6.O43 H9]

Van Eerde, Katherine S. 1976. John Ogilby and the Taste of His Times. Folkestone, Kent: Dawson. [OML reference Z232 O36 V35]

Zupko, Ronald Edward. 1985. A Dictionary of Weights and Measures for the British Isles: The Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Published in Great Britain during the Years 1600–1850.” In Essays Honoring Lawrence C. Wroth, 305–64. Portland, Me.: Anthoensen Press.


FEATURED MAP COMMENTARY THE ROAD FROM YORK TO LANCASTER

Ben Dombrowski, December 2013This strip map of the road between York and Lancaster, across England’s Pennine Mountains, was made as part of John Ogilby’s Britannia (1675), which systematically mapped the roads of England and Wales for the first time. This and the other maps in Britannia are visual itineraries, each depicting a single route from one town to another, and the landmarks along the way, mapped in long narrow strips. Although there is little resemblance between how we currently map roads and how Ogilby depicted them in Britannia, the atlas can be considered as one of the precursors to the modern road atlas because it provided the model by which roads in Britain would be mapped for the next hundred years.

Britannia was Ogilby’s brainchild. Ogilby (1600-1676) was a multi-careered man. He was originally a dancer who later turned to translating and publishing classical texts, before finally

John Ogilby, The Road from York to Lancaster (1675). OS-1675-4

Additional map commentaries online at oshermaps.org



OML’s Outreach team is also available to visit classrooms. All of our lessons can be transported and presented at schools, clubs, enrichment and after-school programs, and camps in southern Maine.

For more information about our lessons, please visit www.oshermaps.org/education-k12 or contact us at [email protected]. Below is a list of our lesson themes with a brief description:

We love having classes come visit us! Field trips typically include a presentation and activity using OML’s materials, a viewing of the current exhibition, and a tour of the Smith Globe Collection. We recommend a group size of 10 to 60, with 1 chaperone for every 12 students. We also recommend allotting one and a half to two hours for a field trip at OML, so students have plenty of time to see everything.

Classroom visits and field trips are both free of charge!

TRAVEL & TOURISM, 3-5Shows how the development of tourism and different modes of transportation changed maps and history. The activity features a map of the U.S., which the students complete by coloring in the states they have visited according to how they got there. A 1930’s board game, “Streamlined Train Game” is also available.

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, E1

MAINE STATE HISTORY, 3-8Shows maps of Maine made in the 1800s and early 1900s to illustrate how the state was settled and developed. The first activity to follow the presentation is a booklet that features early maps of Maine, which students use to answer questions about Maine’s history. Students may use the completed booklet to help them answer trivia questions in the Touring Maine Board Game.

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, C2, D2, E1

EARLY YEARS OF THE UNITED STATES, 5-8Beginning with maps made at the time of the America Revolution, this lesson traces the expansion of the United States, including its westward expansion, until immediately before the Civil War. The presentation is followed by group activity in which students must piece together and compare two maps of the U.S., one made in 1816 and one made in 1866.

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, D1, E1

COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND, 5-12Looks at the rival powers who competed for land in present-day New England and some consequences of that competition. Using a French, British, Dutch, and U.S. maps, this lesson asks: Why did these countries want land here? Who benefited and who was harmed through the colonization of New England?

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, C2, D2, E1, E2

CARTOGRAPHY & THE RENAISSANCE, 6-12Compares maps made in the Middle Ages to maps made during the Renaissance to illustrate the widespread alterations in European thought. The activity to follow the presentation features fictional journal entries from major mapmakers through history. Students must match the mapmakers with their cartographic creations.

ME Social Studies Standards: D1, E1

WESTWARD EXPANSION, 9-12This lesson explores the events of the United States’ westward expansion, including encroachment on Native American lands, major land purchases, mass migrations such as the Oregon Trail and California Gold Rush. The presentation is followed by a group board game on North American exploration.

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, D1, E1, E2

GRIM SIDE OF THEMATIC MAPPING, 9-12Examines thematic maps from the 19th century, including fire insurance, disease, and war maps, while asking: Why were these maps produced? How have they been used? What conditions in the 19th century created demand for these? Includes a group activity in which students must work together to identify how a disease is being spread in a fictional town.


PORTLAND HISTORY, 3-5Uses maps of Portland to illustrate important events and milestones in Portland’s history, including the Revolutionary War and the Great Fire of 1866. It is followed up by an activity booklet that uses additional maps of Portland.


MEDIEVAL MAPS & MONSTERS, 3-5Uses maps made during the Middle Ages and Renaissance to show the monstrous creatures and peoples that explorers expected to find in distant parts of the earth. Includes the Sea Monster Handbook, featuring an image search and space for students to create their own sea monsters, and a board game in which students must find a path to the Far East while avoiding entities feared by medieval seafarers.


PROJECTIONS & GLOBEMAKING, 3-8Tells the story of the ways the surface of the earth has been depicted throughout history, and how maps came to be the way they are today. This is followed by a creative globe-making activity that reinforces the difficulties mapmakers face when projecting the spherical earth on a flat surface. An activity using the Dymaxion Map-Globe of Bucky Fuller is also available.

ME Social Studies Standards: D1, E1

COLONIZATION OF SOUTH AMERICA, 6-12Examines European maps of South America and the Caribbean for illustrations of colonial ambitions. By observing the differing views of South America between nations and time periods, students will better understand the events of the area’s colonization and its consequences: war, exploration, and enslavement.

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, D2, E1, E2

COLONIAL WORLDVIEW, 9-12Uses European maps from before the American Revolution to show how Europeans saw the world and its inhabitants. Highlights images of people, symbols, resources and tools, and asks the following questions: Why did Europeans think colonialism was morally justifiable? Why did they want to colonize? How were they able to colonize so many parts of the world?

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, C2, D2, E1, E2

INTRODUCTION TO MAPS, K-2Uses both old and new maps to illustrate the different ways people can use and make maps. After a short presentation, students will complete Tino’s Map Book, in which they will make their own maps of familiar areas.

ME Social Studies Standards: D1

TRAVEL & TRANSPORTATION, K-2Shows how different modes of transportation changed maps and history. The students will complete a small coloring activity about two young tourists in 1900.

ME Social Studies Standards: C1, E1

Documents

Education Outreach Newsletter Cartography Corneroshermaps.org/sites/default/files/OMLNewsletterFallWinter2014.pdf · maps thematically, according to the different ways in which people