El mes de septiembre está siendo verdaderamente agitado para los miembros del Grupo de Investigación Síncrisis, que están participando en diversas actividades científicas a lo largo y ancho de Europa. Si hace apenas una semana (01-10/09/2018) José Manuel Costa García se encontraba en Viminacium (Serbia) participando en el 24º Congreso de Estudios sobre la Frontera Romana (Limes Congress), donde presentó los últimos avances en la investigación sobre campamentos romanos en el Noroeste peninsular, ahora se encamina a Newcastle, otro antiguo asentamiento fronterizo del Imperio romano, donde asistirá a la Landscape Archaeology Conference (17-20/09/2018). Allí dará una charla acerca de la necesidad de usar análisis GIS para el estudio integral de los asentamientos militares romanos peninsulares. Puedes encontrar toda la información acerca de este congreso aquí, y el resumen de su comunicación (en inglés) a continuación:
105 And all of a sudden, they are everywhere! The need for narratives to assess the diachronic impact of the Roman army in NW Iberia
In the last two decades, Roman military studies have experienced a remarkable leap forward in Spain. The increase in open access to new geospatial datasets, the gradual digitalisation process experienced by the archaeological discipline as a whole, and the confluence with other European scholarly traditions have been decisive in this regard. In north-west Iberia, this impetus has led to the detection of several new sites related to the Roman army, many of them far away from the areas where the military presence was traditionally believed to concentrate. Despite its positive effects, this ‘discovery frenzy’ cannot hide the fact that we still know very little about these sites. Since many were temporary installations, it is usually difficult to recover enough material evidence for their proper characterisation and dating. Unfortunately, no real attention has been paid to the potential of landscape archaeology approaches to overcome these difficulties. The availability of new data actually stresses the need for their systematic management and analysis in order to develop holistic views on the impact of the Roman military presence in these territories. The study of aspects such as the morphology, defensive system or locational pattern of these sites allows us to understand the rationale behind their construction. Added to the data provided by visibility and mobility analyses, this can help us next to identify the dynamics of the Roman military deployment in a given territory. However, not all the questions related to the Roman conquest and occupation of north-west Iberia can be answered just by analysing the remains of one of the agents involved in the whole process. It is in the meeting of two strong archaeological traditions, the Roman military and the Late Iron Age studies where the foundations of new, postcolonial narratives on the matter can be laid.