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

Paper abstract

Applying GIS to the Historical Analysis of Epiknemidian Lokris.

Jose Pascual

[Professor of Ancient History, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid]

The Department of Ancient History of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, in collaboration with the 14th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and the economic support of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture and of a private Company, has developed a research project that has as its main objective the History and Topography of Ancient Epiknemidian Lokris. As a part of the above project we have applied the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to the Epiknemidian Lokris, building maps at a scale of 1:50000 where we could introduce a data base including literary sources, epigraphy, numismatics, archaeology, ancient topography or intensive/extensive prospection, etc. Considering the frustrating lack of information that an Ancient historian normally has to face, and not to give in, the GIS techniques furnished three elements that we could qualify as extraordinary: a great volume of data with an unquestionable accuracy and in a very short period of time. This valuable amount of information could be applied in a) The analysis of the historic constants of the Geography of Epiknemidian Lokris; b) The occupation of the territory and the distribution of the population and c) The knowledge of the possible extension of lokrian poleis. The purpose of this paper is to present the results available on these basic items that we had planned for our research project.