Process
To create the map of the provenance of our horse and rider tomb figure, Maya first rearranged the data so that each row of the spreadsheet represented a separate location of the object. Once we loaded this into ArcGIS Online, and wanted to represent each different place on its journey as a point, we ran into problems. Some of the locations were general regions, such as Han Dynasty China, or Central Hong Kong, while others were more specific cities, such as the two stops in California, and finally we had Carleton College, which was an even more specific location. To account for this, we split the data into two different tables, one with the U.S. locations that could be pinpointed with ZIP codes, and one with the locations in Asia that were more regional in nature.
This finally worked, and from there we were able to adjust the symbology of the points according to the nature of the possession of the object. The origin is a point with the picture of the object, its first sale was depicted with a blue star, and the following transfers of possession were depicted with green stars.
One unresolved issue that remains is that the line layer that connects the points shows up on both the web map and instant app versions that we posted to the group in ArcGIS, but it doesn’t appear in the embedded version (or my computer is too slow to load it, that is also a real possibility as it took a while for each layer to load in).
Potential
Overall, this was a bit of an experimental and rocky first try at the software, but GIS is an exciting way to represent spatial data. I think a cool idea with the provenance of museum items would be to map several of them on one map, and you could group the objects by origin on separate maps (like one map for many objects from Han Dynasty China). Then, it would be interesting to see the dissemination of these objects, where they were sold and donated and held in museums. I think this could also reveal interesting patterns about colonization and the possession of objects in certain countries or areas.
It seems that the whole map is not showing up in this embedded version, it just says “login.carleton.edu refused to connect.” Though I do not get a chance to view the map, I can tell that it is a well-designed map through your description of how you made it!