This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of maps in China, centering on those found in three tombs that date from the 4th to the 2nd century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps (ditu). In it, Michelle H. Wang explores the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China. More than a millennium separates them from the next available map in the early 12th century CE. 

Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, this book offers an alternative perspective by mobilizing methods from art history, archaeology, material culture, religion, and philosophy. It examines the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments, but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. 

The author was a Townsend Fellow in 2012-13.