Old maps as sources in geographical and historical research in Poland

Abstract

This article aims at a critical analysis of the ways of utilizing old maps in Polish geographical and historical research. The role of the old map in such research is determined by making the spatial aspect of historical processes an object of study. The methodology of working with old maps, in turn, is conditioned by the relationship between the time of creating the given map and the time of when the phenomenon under study occurred, as well as by relationship between the features on the map and the object of investigation. Therefore, historians, geographers, cartographers and representatives of other disciplines adopt different approaches to using maps. The article discusses the major methods of using old cartography in historical geography, focusing on their signifi cant role in providing a background for presenting historical processes and a basis for reconstructing the location, development, scale and range of the mapped object. Furthermore, old maps supplement qualitative data about structures privided by written sources. The article stresses the importance of the retrogressive method and differences in ways of using maps for research on the history of the natural landscape (e.g. hydrography and plants), of the cultural landscape (e.g. colonization, industrial works, places of worship, roads) and of the historico-political landscape (e.g. state and Church administrative units). The conclusions highlight that the information potential of old maps is not suffi ciently explored, that cartography had a different role in the time before the introduction of modern surveying methods than afterwards, and that the retrogressive method is dependent on the survival and dynamics of the landscape features which are reconstructed on the basis of old maps.