Links to on-line resources for maps

Comprehensive resources:

  • The best single source for maps on line is that provided by the University of Texas Perry-Casteñada Library Map Collection. It includes high quality digital images of hundreds of maps from their own collection, and a long list of links to other sites, organized by world region. In particular, select Historical maps.

  • To find a current geographical location anywhere around the world, the best tool is the National Geographic Society's MapMachine. On the opening page of the NGS website, select MapMachine in the upper right. Then write into the search box the name of the place you wish to find. Click to search. A separate window will pop up giving that place name in the context of several others in their index. You select the name, click, and a new window appears allowing you to focus in on the relevant location on the world map. The site has features allowing you to download, print, save and customize your map.


    A selection of sites with maps specific to the Silk Road:

  • The International Dunhuang Project at the British Library is displaying a superb set of maps for the Silk Road archaeological expeditions of Sir Aurel Stein. These maps will eventually allow one to click on a location and bring up images of the artifacts which Stein found at that particular place. One can currently bring up high quality details of the excellent maps which Stein and his team made for the Survey of India by clicking on any point on the map of the areas covered by the Stein expeditions (194.66.226.80.2001/MapSearch?12114~). The focus here is the Tarim Basin and points east.

  • The Silk Road Foundation has a variety of Silk Road related maps, showing traveller routes, trade routes, etc. Click on "Maps" on the left bar to select.

  • The Silkroad Project Inc. has an innovative map of the Silk Road, where a "mouseover" enlarges segments of the map of Eurasia as you move the cursor.

  • High quality Islamic History Maps.

  • Central Asian Maps. Several detailed maps displaying cities, regions, etc., provided by T. K. Mallon-McCorgray on his valuable web site devoted to historic coinage.

  • The John C. and Susan L. Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Related Art at Ohio State University has detailed maps of Gandhara, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Central Asia (Tarim Basin), Gansu Province, and Nepal and the Kathmandu Valley.

  • The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, based at the University of California, Berkeley, is developing innovative software to map cultural information. ECAI's Silkroad Atlas project begins to pull together some useful links, including those to maps. If you can get it to work, check the Timeline map that is part of a Berkeley project The Near East in Late Antiquity: the Sasanian Empire.