A disadvantage of this process is that you're still never going to show everything. Maps are, by nature, selective and there is no way to show everything you want. In this context there is still a lot about what these places may mean to people that can't be displayed with something as simple as this

I considered taking a less electronic approach to it. I could have draw it on a printed map or I could have drawn myself a map of Durham and the approximate areas for each of the locations.

Thank you for reading this thread! Feel free to comment with any questions you have about the project or deep mapping in general and I’ll do my best to answer them. [12/12]

I can see how this technique is very versatile. Examples include a map showing spots relating to a certain history or political stance, or a map showing places of importance to a culture or individual, or even just showing all the best cafes in an area. [11/12]

This project was a very interesting thing to do. Some places (e.g. the Cathedral) would be on any normal map. However, some of them were places that would never usually have been put on a map (e.g. an old car frame in the woods and a tree stump where someone sat for hours studying). [10/12]

I feel as if next time I go past each of these places they will have a new meaning to me as I know they hold memories or feelings for my friends and colleagues. It was nice to be told little personal stories about each place. [9/12]

I found that there were 3 common types of reasons for a place being meaningful: a specific memory such as their deed poll being signed; a place of a repeated nice memory such as mine which was often taking a walk there with my partner; and then places they frequent often for work or study. [8/12]

I named each location on the map, wrote down the stories associated with that spot, and added relevant pictures; some locations had more than one story behind them. [7/12]

Once I had asked everyone I selected 10 locations to highlight in a Google Earth project folder. I had more locations than needed as, when asked, people were eager to talk about a nice memory that otherwise wouldn't have been mentioned, it let me get to know a little more about them. [6/12]

I set about asking my friends and colleagues who I knew in the Durham area for memories they associate with or that took place in Durham. I asked them to provide a location in Durham, a short story, and possibly a picture to go with their contribution. [5/12]

In archaeology, deep mapping is usually a collaboration of a community, each sharing memories of important places - either individual or collective, because of this I decided to include memories and places of the people around me within my deep map project for a more collaborative feel to it. [4/12]

I undertook a ‘deep-mapping’ project in order to create a map of Durham that showed more than just the layout of streets but gave more information about places that had meaning to certain individuals. [3/12]

Deep mapping emerged as a way of challenging and critiquing traditional mapping techniques that only present the maps in a certain way (often in a top-down cartographic style). Maps are selective in what they show and can be edited to fit the criteria of the maker. [2/12]