Firman
José Manuel Costa García (ponente)
Resumen
RomanArmy is a research collective focused on the study of the socio-political, economic and cultural changes which took place in NW Iberia in relation to the Roman military presence. To this day, the development of a specific, comprehensive, and multi-scalar methodology for the detection and study of Roman military sites is one of the major successes of this initiative. In this sense, the combined use of different remote sensing techniques has played a vital role.Our goal now is to go beyond positivist analyses and start to build up new historical narratives based on the new available data. For instance, the use of GIS-based mobility and visibility spatial analyses allow us to better understand the strategic vision behind the actions deployed by the Roman army in these territories.Old scholarly narratives can be now overcome. In this way, several sites have been detected in areas silent in the Greco-Roman literary sources outside the major conflicto areas, and therefore only slightly addressed by the traditional historiography when discussing the process of conquest of NW Iberia between the 2nd c. BC and the 1st c. AD. However, to what extent can the existence of archaeological data related to the Roman military presence be linked with an open conflict?Several factors could explain the deployment of troops in both war and post-warscenarios, but how can we distinguish the Roman military sites that belong to each moment? The inherent logistic aspects immediately come to mind –e.g. campaign preparations, supplying, road building, or mining-, but the evidence could be also reflecting more subtle expressions of violence in a context of military occupation and territorial reorganisation. Yet, in order to restore the lost pieces of this historical picture we need to adopt inclusive, multi-disciplinary methodologies which should also comprise the study of the native societies.