ARCHAEOLOGICAL MEETING OF THESSALY AND CENTRAL GREECE, 2003-2005
FROM PREHISTORY TO THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD

Paper abstract

Assessing the social use of the ancient landscape of Boeotia through the deconstruction of the archaeological record in a GIS environment.

Emeri Farinetti

[PhD candidate- University of Leiden (NL)]

In the paper we will present a possible way of dealing with a regional landscape and its settlement history using a GIS based approach. The case-study presented is from ancient Boeotia, whose landscape and settlement history is diachronically examined from Neolothic up to Late Roman times. A system has been implemented to deal critically with the different levels of complexity of both the information and the archaeological evidence available from bibliography (in a broader, regional perspective) and from more recent systematic artefact surface surveys, which intensively hover the landscape in search of all traces of human activity in smaller defined areas. The methodology established, dealing jointly with material culture and environmental data, aims to assess taskscapes starting from the actual archaeological record available. In order to do this, the archaeological record is deconstructed into units of archaeological evidence, through a process of strong source-critique, and then reconstructed in terms of meaningful units of social activities in the landscape. Each single site - activity focus (agricultural production, settlement/habitation, cult place, burial place, etc.) is examined with the aim to understand, through GIS analysis, what it means in terms of landscape and of ΄social use΄ of the landscape during time.