Summary
For this work, I will present a first approach to part of my Ph.D. thesis project, which aims to study the historical sequence of the Iron Age (8th - 2nd centuries BC) in the Upper Ebro from a Landscape Archaeology perspective.Introduction: Archaeological research on the Iron Age in the present-day territory of La Rioja (Spain), which corresponds to the largest proportion of the territory in the study area, has been characterized by the fragmentation and scarcity of information, the lack of global projects for a comprehensive study of the period, as well as the absence of studies that relate the sites to each other and to their surroundings.In view of this situation, I contend that an approach from the perspective of Landscape Archaeology and the use of non-invasive tools and methods, including LiDAR, historical aerial photography, satellite images, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is promising to produce a broad-scale temporal and spatial interpretation of the social dynamics of this period.Objectives: The main purpose of my Ph.D. project is to understand the transformations in the forms of occupation, production, and social relations in the upper Ebro during the Iron Age from an extensive territorial scale and a long-term temporal perspective.The work I will display at the poster will include showing how the use of non-invasive tools and methods, consisting of the application of LiDAR, historical aerial images, and satellite images, has been instrumental in the location of new Iron Age fortified sites (hillforts) and for better characterizing those that had been already catalogued. A comparison with similar sites already inventoried South of the Iberian System (province of Soria) will allow proposing a probable chronological attribution, that will be verified with field surveys and the analysis of material culture found on the surface of the sites. Therefore, this work will also show the results obtained from surveys in six of the new potential hillforts located using non-invasive methodologies. Results and discussion: Results from the present study will illustrate the potential that non-invasive methodologies and GIS have for the reconstruction and modelling of past landscapes in this particular region, as well as the importance of Landscape Archaeology for the identification and interpretation of social and cultural patterns that are embedded in them.
Keywords
La Rioja. Iron Age. Hillforts. Remote-Sensing. Landscape Archaeoogy. GIS. LiDAR.