Make Worse Maps for D&D, but Play Deeper Worlds | Some Tips for Using Real World Resources

When many people think of archaeology, they think of excavating artifacts from the dirt, or maybe only the most aesthetically pleasing artifacts sitting in a museum display. However, excavation is really only the beginning of the middle part of an archaeological project; the real work begins with researching the cultural, historical, and environmental contexts relevant to a particular region throughout the period of its use by humans. The main idea here is not to convince you to make uglier maps, but rather to provide tips for using historical resources to help add a greater sense of realism, and depth, to your fantasy worlds.

In this video I will discuss the use of historical maps, along with a diverse array of other historical materials that an archaeologist might use to better understand past land use histories. I will also show how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to integrate past and present data on climate, ecology, geology/geomorphology, and even historical boundaries, to better understand the lived worlds of past peoples.

I apologize to all native French speakers for my often terrible pronunciation. I took two years of French in secondary school, and two semesters at university; but, I seldom had the opportunity to converse with anyone, so my spoken use of the language is far behind my reading and writing ability.

Video Menu
0:46 - Historical Maps of the World
5:00 - Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
8:16 - Economic Atlases/Historical Commodity Lists & Maps
10:10 - GIS/FAO Ecological Zones of the World
14:25 - GIS/USDA, NRCS Major Land Resource Areas (MLRA) of the U.S.
16:58 - GIS/Bailey's Ecological Zones of the U.S.
18:20 - GIS/Working with Digital Elevation Models (DEM)
23:17 - GIS/Digitizing Features to Make Your Own Maps
26:42 - GIS/Using DEMs in Conjunction with Historic Maps
34:02 - Images of Anthropogenic Chalk Caves and Quarries
36:25 - GIS/Simple Georeferencing of Historic Maps

My Château de Coucy topographic map
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14vWt...

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1912)
https://archive.org/details/peripluso...

Atlas of the World's Commerce
https://archive.org/details/sc_000082...

FAO Global Ecological Zones
https://www.fao.org/3/ad652e/ad652e00...

USDA, NRCS Major Land Resource Areas
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/d...

Bailey's Ecological Zones of the U.S. (1995)
https://ia601905.us.archive.org/29/it...

Quarries of Picardy Region website
http://explosfriches.fr/index.php/car...

4th International Symposium on Archaeological Mining History
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

Some Additional Scholarly Readings
Woodward, David
"Medieval Mappaemundi." Chapter 18 of History of Cartography Vol. 1
https://press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/...

Keely, Fontana, and Quick
"Baffles and Bastions: The Universal Features of Fortifications" in the Journal of Archaeological Research Vol. 15, pp. 55-95.
https://link.springer.com/article/10....

Buringh, Eltho
"The Population of European Cities from 700 to 2000: Social and Economic History" in the Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences Vol. 6, pp. 1-18.
https://scholar.archive.org/work/abqg...


QGIS (Free and Open Source GIS)
https://qgis.org/en/site/

#dnd, #ttrpg, #gis