Art and photography give you a snapshot of a time and place, a detailed idea of what it would have been like to be there. Narratives and timelines make history coherent and interesting by hijacking our love of stories. Maps provide a large-scale overview of an entire period, joining together distinct narratives.

While thinking in maps may first bring to mind the idea of cartography, a map does not need to be geographic—it can be any symbolic depiction of the relationship between elements of some physical or mental space, such as themes, objects, or areas.