GIS Use in the Archaeology of Mediterranean Landscapes and Abandoned Cityscapes

This paper is concerned with GIS and landscape archaeology in Europe and will mostly focus on the Mediterranean area where in recent years the use of GIS has been crucial not only to support and increase the efficiency and quality of many major research projects, but also to develop essential cultural and historical considerations on past human behaviour and landscape evolution, accessibility and visibility. The use of GIS by archaeologists and landscape historians not only adds “technological ways” to satisfy the needs of the theoretical background and historical questionnaires of the discipline, but also helps to push towards new approaches. 

In the first part of the presentation I will go into some of the potentials, pitfalls, breakthroughs and challenges of the practice of GIS use in European landscape archaeology during the last decade, reviewing some applications in the fields of: mapping and geomatics, the study and integration of historical maps, predictive modelling, remote sensing, field survey, site location analyses vs. the landscape, the study of networks, patterns and grids, and the landscape and site visualisation. Thereafter, I will focus on some research in progress, as part of the large scale historical and archaeological study of the abandoned “cityscapes” of protohistoric and Roman towns and their territories in Italy, Portugal and Corsica. The multi-application of GIS technology in such projects illustrates well some of the current ways in which GIS are central for the collection, management, analysis and presentation of regional data, slowly revolutionizing the way in which archaeology is performed.