A diachronic study of the Roman landscapes and skyscapes of Tarraco (Tarragona, Spain)

Tarraco (Tarragona, Spain) was the provincial capital of the largest Roman prov-ince in the Western Mediterranean, Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis. During cen-turies it experienced various periods of intense building activity and land trans-formations that modified both the rural and urban landscapes, more appreciably since the consolidation of the Roman power in the Iberian Peninsula, in the 2nd century BCE. Several works have previously studied the presence of astronomical patterns in the configuration of the territory in Roman towns and centuriations and, specifically in Tarraco, a connection between a “sacred” conception of the space and the layout of the land originated during the foundational rite has been investigated in the last years. On this basis, in this work we present a diachronic study of the evolution of the urban and rural design of Tarraco and the explora-tion of possible relations between the structures constructed in different phases of the Roman presence with the surrounding land and the sky. By this, the aim is to explore whether particular celestial objects or events were considered in the suc-cessive projects of urban development in one of the most relevant towns in His-pania, which ones were those and the reasons behind it.

Archaeoastronomy. Tarraco. Hispania. Augustus. Roman Urbanism.