Chapter 13 An Interdisciplinary Study of the Selden Map of China (Early Seventeenth Century): From Spectral Imaging and Machine Learning to Art History and Cartography
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Abstract
Since the 2008 ‘re-discovery’ of the Selden map of China, an early seventeenth century map of Asia, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the importance of the map in our understanding of global connections in the early seventeenth century has focussed the attention of historians. In the style of Chinese landscape paintings, it depicts the maritime trade routes with precise compass bearings on a map that includes China in the north, down to Java in the south, the Philippines and Japan in the east and extending to Calicut in the west. Our previous study in 2016 addressed the question of the origins of the map through an interdisciplinary approach using material evidence derived from a suite of complementary analytical techniques along with art history and geophysics knowledge. Until then, the map had been studied extensively by historians but never through evidence from art history and scientific analysis of the artist’s materials. The binding medium and pigment mix were found to be more akin to the South and West Asian traditions than the Chinese, even though visually the map looks Chinese or East Asian. A hypothesis for the origin of the Selden map in Aceh Sumatra was proposed based on evidence from artist materials, geophysics and art history considerations. In the current study we take this approach further, demonstrating the powers of interdisciplinary research in the study of an information rich complex object of historical importance, through combining knowledge in imaging, spectroscopy and machine learning with history, art history, geophysics and cartography.