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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 128: Gough Map: Artefact and Image - New Findings, New Questions

Monday 1 July 2019, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Moderator/Chair:Catherine Delano Smith, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Paper 128-aThe Gough Map: Artefact and Image Revisited
(Language: English)
Catherine Delano Smith, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Index terms: Art History - General, Geography and Settlement Studies
Paper 128-bWhere Did the Rivers on the Gough Map Come From?
(Language: English)
Paul D. A. Harvey, Department of History, Durham University
Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 128-cLoch Tay, Brutus the Trojan, and Tarn Wadling: Mytho-Historical Inscriptions on the Gough Map
(Language: English)
William Shannon, Independent Scholar, Preston
Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Abstract

The full importance of the map of Britain known as the Gough Map (c. 1400) is only now beginning to emerge. A new phase of collaborative cross-disciplinary research was initiated in 2012 when a team of historians and scientists was convened to contribute to a state-of-the-art examination of the physical nature of the document (parchment, pigments), its codicology (scripts, execution), and its geographical and historical content with the aim of discovering more about the processes of its creation, origins and purpose. An interim report (Imago Mundi, 69:1 (2017), 1-36) corrected some long-held misunderstandings while also underlining the need to investigate further its physical production and the context of its origins. The aim in the proposed panel is to point to some of the ways in which the Gough Map interconnects with many aspects of medieval studies, introduce the implications of its origins, and comment on the need for historians and scientists to work closely together in hyperspectral analysis in historical study. After a summary of the revised assessment of the map, attention will turn to the depiction of the rivers and their relationship with the hydrography on other medieval maps. Finally, a systematic analysis of the mytho-historical inscriptions will shed light on the gestation of the map, which appears to have been compiled at a central point from information gathered from around the country, but to reflect highly local knowledge (such as the Arthurian Tarn Wadling) and exceptionalism rather than a primary concern with administration.