GIS Modelling of Surveyor Conditions

Abstract

Surveyor literature provides us with the theory of how the management and boundaries of the countryside were managed in the Roman world. In the mentality of that time, we understand how farms were divided and what elements were used to delimit them. This information is general and can hardly be applied to archaeological studies today, where studies concentrate on the site itself, e.g., a Roman villae. Nowadays, we have tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that allow us to approximate what the territory and its cadastre could be like. In this article, we propose a methodology to combine surveying information with geographic space so that we establish a theoretical model on how to delimit estates and know their fundi. For this purpose, we use a case study in the Alto Alentejo, a unique region where there is a high density of Roman villa, but whose settlement structure is not well known, and which could be part of a prefecture of the capital of Lusitania Emerita Augusta. The proposed model allows us to visually generate the criteria applied by the surveyors, which allows us to discuss questions such as the possibility of secondary settlement as settlers or independent landowners or the potential areas of saltus, among others.

Keywords: Surveyors, Alto Alentejo, Roman Territory, Fundus, GIS Modelling.