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Blogs Categories: Exploring the Early Americas

Blogs Categories: Exploring the Early Americas

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Investigating Collections: Science Meets Archaeology at the Library of Congress

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This post is about research conducted by the author, in conjunction with Dr. Tana Villafana, Research Chemist and Spectroscopist, from the Preservation Research and Testing Division, and with Rosemary Ryan, Archaeological Research Fellow, at the Library of Congress. The research is part of a larger project to characterize and study all of the Mesoamerican jade …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Marvels of Pre-Columbian America: Talking Textiles

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This is a guest post by Rosemary Ryan, an Archaeological Research Fellow at the Library of Congress. Rosemary is a student at Towson University specializing in Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology. Her research at the Library is in support of the Exploring the Early Americas exhibit and the Jay I. Kislak Collection, which comprises of more …

A Year in Review: Newly Scanned Maps of 2017

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Every month on our home page, we provide a monthly list of maps that have been scanned and added to the online collections of the Geography and Map Division. To celebrate the end of the year and to ring in the new, I took a look back at the lists of maps that have been …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

The Codex Quetzalecatzin comes to the Library of Congress

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Writing is a strange invention. One might suppose that its emergence could not fail to bring profound changes in the conditions of human existence…                                                                           –Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques Time and money are spent in collecting the remains …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Celebrating Waldseemuller's Carta Marina at 500: A Conference at the Library of Congress

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Conference Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1516 Carta Marina. Keynote address by award winning author and historian of science Dava Sobel. A two-day conference hosted by the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress will celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta Marina, one of the great masterpieces of Renaissance …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

What Shade the Stone: Some Late Night Thoughts on Color and Curation in Archaeology

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The Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology and History of the Early Americas became part of the Geography and Map Division several years ago and contains Pre-Columbian archaeological objects, maps, like Waldseemüller’s famous 1516 Carta Marina, and manuscripts and rare books relating to the earliest history of America. The dates of the collection span …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Rare Spanish manuscript map showing the western borders of the Louisiana Purchase arrives at the Library of Congress

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Today’s guest post is by Anthony Páez Mullan, a cartographic reference specialist in the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. He specializes in the historical cartography of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula and is a co-author of the “Luso-Hispanic World in Maps.” The Library of Congress recently acquired an important …