19th Century Black Maps

Description

‘Black Maps’ is a short-hand term for some of the earliest survey plans of the Canterbury Land District. They were created in the mid 1800s, although some continued to be annotated well into the twentieth century. These maps give an insight into traditional areas of mahinga kai (sites of significance to Māori for food gathering) such as wetlands, lagoons, and estuaries before they were modified.

Environment Canterbury is working on a cross-agency project with Te RÅ«nanga o Ngāi Tahu, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), Micrographics and Archives New Zealand to digitise the original paper copies in order to make them more accessible to the public.

Find out more about Black Maps and the mapping project by reading the Historic South Island Survey Maps Story Map

Original Black Maps

The original paper copies of the black maps have been transformed into spatial data. They are scanned and then georeferenced in order to make them digitially available. These maps have then been stitched together and mad publicly available on Canterbury Maps.

View the Black Map - originals.

Digitised Black Map

The information on the original paper copies of the black maps have been digitally traced to create a series of spatial datasets representing the historical location of natural and cultural features including rivers, lakes, wetlands, coastlines, vegetation, Māori place names and cultural sites. These maps are easier to read and understand compared to the digitally available black maps - originals.

View the Black Maps - digitiesd

Map Credits

Ngai Tahu, Environment Canterbury, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), Archives New Zealand

Access and Use Constraints

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License