Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
With only a toponymic trace of past engagements, the topographical map
silences the manner and frequency of people's activities and relationship with this
region. As a result the landscape that is presented in Fig.
2
is one without people.
While such regions have been the subject of much human activity—both now and
in the past—its cartographic image constructs an appearance of being remote,
historically empty and untouched: an approach that reinforces an ideation of
wilderness as a landscape separate from culture.
3 Contours and Topographical Truth
The primary information that gives such maps their sense of coherence comes
from the contour lines. These describe an imagined line where the land meets the
atmosphere at regular increments above sea level. They provide a sustained and
detailed description of the changes in height in the terrain. With training, it is
possible to read these and compare the folds of the land as it undulates, steepens or
flattens.
The first surveys by the settlers produced a boundary of where the coast meets
the sea. However, while these surveys described the coast in accurate detail, the
maps themselves were not made on the coast but from the distance afforded by a
boat sailing beyond landfall. Similarly, the contours in the modern topographical
map produce a second coast; but in this modern scenario, it is a surface formed
from flying over the land's boundary with the atmosphere. In each is a graphical
representation of a container: one linear, the other planar but, significantly, both
derived from a position that is external to that being described. Each map brings
''into being the terra firma'' (Carter
1999
, p 145) in which the unknown and blank
lands, bounded by a 'finite' coastal envelope, can now be located on a map that
pre-exists any knowledge of the land derived by being 'on the ground'. In the first,
where the coastlines join, an island is created; while in the latter, where the
surfaces meet, a globe is made. This second coastline survey from the air produces
an image of a world below, whose laminar surface constructs a site on which
activities, artifacts and life can now be located.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold states such representations convey ''a theatrical
stage from which all the actors have disappeared, the world—as it is represented in
the map—appears deserted, devoid of life. No-one is there; nothing is going on''
(
2000
, p 234). Karen Piper considers innovative techniques including 'triangula-
tion', 'aerial photography', and 'space imaging' mean cartography doesn't require
being on the ground. Instead, data is removed from its context, verified and cal-
ibrated against other data sets (Piper
2002
, p 168). Data, rather than 'ground-truth',
contains significance, and it is the loss of information gathered from within the
land being mapped that constitutes a fundamental silence in modern topographical
cartography (Pickles
2004
).
In this panoptic framing of landscape, a sense of separation between people and
the land is constructed. From such a position comes a dual sense of placelessness.
