Posting 1 - Africamap, Tunisia

Africamap demonstrates a range of features which can assist one in extricating a great variety of information on the African landscape.  The tool moves beyond using a map for simple physical reference and allows the user to compare and contrast elements of the more general landscape.  This idea of 'landscape' involves a variety of types of information which a traditional map can't really offer.  The various layers and points of interest can be used to illustrate connections between (among other things) physical presence, environmental factors, socio-political constructs, and historical positioning.  By combining these various features Africamap allows the user to take just about any location in Africa and construct a comprehensive landscape.

Tunisia:
One thing which struck me about Tunisia in particular while using Africamap was the tremendously long history of the place name.  Maps and atlases dating as far back as 1612 show Tunis on their maps, and throughout all of the various territorial changes and differences in mapping practice the name remains.  Many other areas in Africa change names a multitude of times, while Tunisia manages to remain relatively constant.  There are several possible explanations for this.

I think that one important explanation is simply the proximity of Tunisia to Europe.  Its location on the edge of the Mediterranean ensures a more or less constant level of contact with Europeans.  This level of familiarity ensures that place names endure because of frequent use and economic convenience.  It becomes much harder to constantly redraw borders and rename places (as they did in much of central Africa) when there is an established tradition and understanding of an area's place within the global network.

Another explanation concerns the cultural heritage of Western thought.  These ancient maps are cultural constructs as much as physical ones.  The ancient Greco-Roman world occupied an important place in Western cultural traditions, and as such the sites and sense of history are well preserved.  Tunisia was an important Pheonician colony since antiquity and was the location of the city of Carthage.  The Punic wars were a well documented cultural event, and Western scholarship has retained interest in them to this day.  Early modern maps were often colonialist or imperialist projections, but in this case the cultural aspects of Western-style imperialism take precedence.  The area is given identity based upon Western history rather than concurrent cultural/ethnic composition.

Ancient Roman ruins at Douga (Tunisia)