Water and Social Space: Using georeferenced maps and geocoded images to enrich the history of Rio de Janeiro's fountains

Water infrastructure is essential to any city, but especially so in the history of Rio de Janeiro. Historically, Rio de Janeiro lacked easy access to fresh water. Not only was it not situated along a river but it was impractical to dig wells over much of the original city because of marshes and a high water table. A single aqueduct completed in the eighteenth century supplied the city with water until the nineteenth century when additional aqueducts began to be built. By necessity, public fountains were vital for the city. The public spaces around fountains were frequented by many residents, the majority of whom were slaves responsible for the delivery of water. Using a geospatial database with georeferenced historical maps and geocoded historical images, this article explores the waterworks of the city of Rio de Janeiro in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, paying particular attention to the functional, monumental, and social aspects of fountain

Who Cares Who Made the Map? La Carta del Cantino and its anonymous maker

This paper explores the authorship of the anonymous La Carta del Cantino through an analysis of design signatures. Using high resolution digital copies of charts in ArcGIS, La Carta del Cantino is compared to contemporaneous charts. The long-held assumption that La Carta del Cantino was a surreptitious copy of the Portuguese king’s royal pattern chart is rejected in favor of a more simple explanation: Alberto Cantino commissioned the world chart from a chartmaker in Lisbon, and that chartmaker was Pedro Reinel

Fontes textuais e vida material: observações preliminares sobre casas de moradia nos Campos dos Goitacases, sécs. XVIII e XIX

A autora explora uma rica coleção de inventários dos séculos XVIII e XIX, referentes a habitantes dos Campos de Goitacazes (no atual Norte Fluminense, RJ). São propostas inferências sobre vários tópicos: atributos morfológicos e tecnológicos das estruturas, padrões de atividades (em particular as f:!rodutivas), arranjos espaciais, sistemas de artefatos, relações com a organização familiar, a condição servil, sistemas de valor, etc. Também se registram as mudanças observadas

Vestígios indígenas na cartografia do sertão da América portuguesa

During the first three centuries of colonization of Portuguese America, indigenous cartography helped the outlanders to decipher the space that they conventionally named sertão (backcountry). The colonizers in the Captaincy of São Paulo (expeditions, soldiers, settlers, bureaucrats, merchants, and adventurers) mapped out the hinterland with utmost care. However, because the territory was a colony, such agents reorganized that space and classified the ethnic groups into distinct, fixed and homogenous categories. As the Portuguese Crown moved ahead with its conquest, the indigenous groups were gradually wiped out from the maps and their territories expropriated.Nos três primeiros séculos da colonização da América portuguesa, a cartografia indígena auxiliou no processo de decodificação do espaço convencionalmente chamado "sertão" pelos adventícios. Agentes de colonização da capitania de São Paulo (bandeirantes, soldados, povoadores, burocratas, comerciantes e aventureiros) mapearam cuidadosamente os territórios interiores. A situação colonial, entretanto, impôs uma nova orientação do espaço, bem como classificou os grupos étnicos em categorias distintas, fixas e homogêneas. Nesse processo de conquista da Coroa portuguesa, os grupos indígenas foram gradativamente eclipsados dos mapas, e seus territórios, expropriados

New World Civitas, Contested Jurisdictions and Intercultural Conversation in the Construction of the Spanish Monarchy

Jurisdictional frontiers were created, contested, and negotiated among a wide range of actors, including native Americans and Europeans, with reference to the cities founded in Castilla del Oro (roughly present-day Panama). This research deals, first, with the reshaping of the concept of a city in the New World, based on its inhabitants' sense of civitas. It analyses, secondly, the creation and redefinition of jurisdiction during political conflicts and, third, the construction and maintenance of jurisdiction through local relations with indigenous populations described as "conversation". The analysis of the creation and preservation of local jurisdictions allows for an interpretation of the complexities involved in the configuration of political power and political space from below in the territories claimed by the Spanish Monarchy.Art Empir