Archipelago

Archipelago is a term deriving from the Venetian Duchy of the Archipelago, which was set up in the Cyclades region of Greece by the Sanudo family in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Some Sfera maps use just Archipelago, while others offer Parte Archipelago ("the Archipelago Region"). There is a puzzle, however, in that this toponym usually appears on the Sfera maps alongside the Aegean islands of Lango, Samos, Chios, Mytilene, Tenedos, and Imbros, most of which were not part of the Duchy and were under Genoese rather than Venetian control in the early 15th century. It is not clear whether the term Archipelago was being used in an expansive sense to refer to all the Greek islands, or if its presence is meant to indicate that the Duchy of the Archipelago lay beyond the islands typically named on the Sfera maps.