#MAREMonday 27

On 05.02.2024 we present the 27th session of our online lecture series with a contribution of

Marta Del Mastro Ochoa
(Universidad de Alicante)

Mapping the sea: the spatial analysis of the marine spaces of the eastern peninsula
through historical sources in the al-Ándalus era

Abstract:

The presentation that concerns us will focus on the development of a PhD thesis on going. This research is being conducted through the theoretical approach of the maritime cultural landscape, in the chronological scope of Al-Andalus and geographically focused in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. However, with our approach, we aim to lay a methodological set up which could be applicable to different geographical and chronological contexts.

As the title of the project suggests, the main objective of this study is to test the feasibility of using GIS to describe the maritime cultural landscape of a specific area and era, applying this methodology to the various case studies. Describing the maritime landscape will allow us to relate the environmental conditions of the coastal zone with the presence or absence of archaeological remains in several moments of time. Regarding the nautical perspective, we pretend to view the land from the sea, as
various aspects of the landscape will be analysed for their suitability to carry out activities related to the maritime environment, whether or not they involve directly the presence and use of vessels. As far as the diachronic perspective is concerned, underlying this premise is the fact that we are going to use not only several types of sources, in addition to the interdisciplinarity of this type of study, but also several chronological periods.

Regarding the method, we pretend to elaborate an „historical marine map“ which will consist of: theapproach to the interpretative reconstruction of the paleo-coast through studies of coastal geomorphology, followed by the reinterpretation of historical sources from a nautical perspective, the identification of elements of the maritime cultural landscape and their functions, whose data will be structured in a relational database, and the creation of a GIS platform through which we will conduct several analyses on the proposed landscape. Some of the analysis proposed will consist of the superimposition of historical cartography, reconstruction of marine spaces when possible as well as the paleo coast, and the geolocation of the elements as individual entities and performance of various statistical analyses.