Cartographic evidence for seventeenth-century ‘cross-sites’ in North-East Scotland: Robert Gordon of Straloch and the Blaeu maps of Scotland

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the cartographic depiction of a series of crosses shown on one of Robert Gordon of Straloch’s seventeenth-century maps of North-East Scotland. Their portrayal in map form within the religious context of the time is problematic. Their potential existence on the ground raises even greater problems of identity and form. That they were not, in reality, as they were depicted on the maps is evident by the landscape evidence. The survival of documentary evidence in the form of the Straloch Papers moves the story from the North-East of Scotland to Amsterdam, the place of production of the maps. These papers describe aspects of the wider political upheavals during which these maps were made and suggest possible motivations beyond geographic interest.

KEYWORDS:

• Maps
• crosses
• cross-sites
• Reformation
• Counter-Reformation
• civil war
• river systems
• watersheds
• boundaries

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thanks Jeff Oliver for reading a draft of this paper and for making a large number of pertinent suggestions which have been gratefully acted upon.