The principal aim of the lecture will be to highlight some of the discussions within the interdisciplinary fields of “critical GIS” and “critical mapping” in relation to archaeology. Specifically, it will be stressed that the deconstruction of “the Cartesian map” - an essential constituent of GIS technology - within geography from the late 1980s onwards, has had little effect on archaeologists despite the omnipresence and crucial role of maps in the discipline. Reconstructing a post-Cartesian archaeological map, as will be pointed out in the talk, is a challenge that has great prospects for archaeology. The lecture will involve a discussion on how a post-Cartesian archaeological map can be reconstructed by bringing some of the archaeological implications of Cartesian mapping practices under close scrutiny. Finally a GIS-based case study from the Cretan Bronze Age settlement of Malia will be used to further elaborate on what a post-Cartesian archaeological map may look like.