I think our web map turned out pretty nicely. I’m not sure if this shows up in the embedded web app version, but I like our clean layout and the way the location points are differentiated in different colors — I think it’s simple and easy to understand. Looking at it now, I wonder if it might’ve been a better idea to draw the big line between Hong Kong and California across the Pacific Ocean instead of across Asia, Africa, and the Atlantic — that’s probably not how it travelled — but hopefully it’s not a huge deal. It does bring to mind a potential limitation of web mapping though: it gives the viewer a really good sense for where stuff goes, but not necessarily how it gets there. Of course, if we had drawn the line differently, anyone probably could have put two and two together. Still, it seems like a good thing to keep in mind — letting the audience know some details about the object and how it came to each location (as a gift, purchase, etc.), maybe with a key and differentiated points — is probably a good idea, especially when dealing with something potentially sensitive like object provenance. I bet that a Story Map would be a good way to pack in some of that extra information and even animate the path of the object a little more clearly or artistically.
I have used ArcGis once before to make exactly that, although it was a more multifaceted project than just an account of one object. It also was a complicated and sensitive subject (slavery and silver mines in Ancient Greece), and it was really valuable to have a multimedia platform where we could include a lot of textual context for our project. The standard web map doesn’t quite have that, but I’m still struck by how useful it must be for visualizing data spatially. It’s also, it probably goes without saying, incredibly efficient and easy compared to the analog way of mapping. I don’t see web mapping being a tool that I’ll continue using as a creator in any future research endeavor, but I could certainly see myself using it as a viewer — I’ve always found traditional maps a little difficult (I have trouble with direction and spatial reasoning), and having them in an interactive, annotated form is a great gift.
I think you bring up a very valid point that maps, like the ones we made, are more to show where the artifacts have been versus the path they took to get there. Obviously their paths were unlikely to be a completely straight line from one point to another but I think it is definitely something to keep in mind. Overall I like your embedded map, nice job!
I think it’s cool that you were able to embed the actual map onto your blog post, because me and my group members were unable to figure that out, and it adds such a cool interactive element to your blog post. I think you also make a good point about the map representation not probably being the way that the object made its way to the US.