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An Optimal Vantage Point on the Material World? On the Properties, Powers, and Pitfalls of Maps
Christopher Witmore, Brown University

Maps: flat projections of the material world are necessary modes of archaeological documentation and visualization. With them we are able to manifest and circulate the things, features, sites, landscapes—the fields of archaeological endeavor—at a distance while maintaining something of their reality in two dimensions. What properties of maps facilitate the translation of the local into global terms? Likewise, what are the tradeoffs? What other aspects of the material world fall through the sieve of these scenographies? Why is such background noise of importance? This paper addresses these questions from two vantage points. First, it tracks the transformations in imaging (and writing) craftsmanship as implicated in our disciplinary practices. In so doing, it builds a long-term, comparative perspective from maps among antiquarians to those complied by 19th century military geographers to maps in the hands of contemporary survey archaeologists on the ground in Greece. With the properties of maps in view, so to speak, this paper then sets out a scheme, a model of practice based on the notion of mediation. From this second vantage point, we may, it is suggested, keep both the powers and pitfalls of media, such as maps, in clear focus.

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