One of historians greatest primary tools Maps
Back in 2010, while reading – and listening to – the brilliant A History of the World in 100 Objects (yes, that’s where the Irish Times got it from), one of my favourite items was a North American buckskin map from the late eighteenth century. Depicting the region between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, the map was drawn by Piakshaw Indians to communicate in discussions over land with European settlers. I can vividly remember loading the podcast on to my iPhone last summer and standing gazing at the object in the British Museum while Neil MacGregor – BM director and narrator of the BBC Radio 4 series – explained the conceptual differences between American Indian visions of territory and those of the ever-encroaching Europeans. (A note in case anyone is worried about my sanity: Neil MacGregor’s voice was coming through some pretty standard in-ear headphones rather than a disembodied…
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The View from The DJ booth 