History of Cartography online

Since the first volume appeared in 1987 the University of Chicago’s History of Cartography series of monographs has become a standard and authoritative reference work on matters relating to cartography and its history. The project is still ongoing – six volumes are planned in all, three have been published. Each volume comprises a series of essays by leading scholars with extensive notes, bibliography and index.

Thus, the somewhat substantial volumes are now rather more portable and even more useful.

The first volume covers cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, whilst the second volume looks at cartography in traditional Islamic, Asian, African, American Australian, Arctic and Pacific societies.

Want to know if European rock art contains any possible map elements then look at chapter 4, volume 1; looking to see who used sticks to draw or  make  maps, search across all the volumes; interested in celestial cartography, then search across all 4 volumes to see who might have created maps of the stars.