Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are now a well-established component of landscape archaeology and hardly require an introduction amongst contemporary Romanists. The more pertinent question, then, is not whether GIS and spatial analysis should or could be employed by modern archaeologists, but rather whether they present a means to ask and answer genuinely new research questions.
This collection brings together twelve contributions concerned with field survey, remote sensing, environmental reconstruction, mobility, settlement and economic modelling across Spain and Portugal. Its range offers a useful snapshot of current Iberian practices, yet the diversity of its regional case studies occasionally works against the editors’ ambition to offer an integrated perspective on Roman Hispania.
The opening contribution by the volume’s editors, Carneiro and Trapero Fernández (ch. 1) supplies the volume’s historiographical and institutional framework. They begin by laying out the disjunction between the modern border separating Spain and Portugal and the political, economic and environmental geographies of Roman Hispania. The editors highlight differences in research funding, access to spatial data, academic training and strategic heritage management, between the two countries and across internal administrative boundaries. They also weave together a narrative, presenting a broad-stroke intellectual movement integrating digital methods into the archaeological mainstream, moving away from targeted excavations of individual sites towards a diverse research portfolio of field surveys, settlement-pattern analyses and computational modelling.
Between this introduction and the concluding discussion by Verhagen and Sarris (ch. 12), ten case studies cover a wide range of landscapes, material and spatial evidence and analytical scales. Intensive survey at Terrugem (ch. 2) and remote sensing in central and northern Portugal (ch. 9) address the creation and enhancement of archaeological geo-datasets. Studies of Cádiz Bay (ch. 3), Conimbriga (ch. 4), the Ambroz Valley (ch. 5), northern Carpetania (ch. 7), La Calzadilla (ch. 8) and Tobarrillas Alta (ch. 10) explore themes of mobility, accessibility, settlement and territorial organisation. A reconstruction of vanished wetlands at Cádiz (ch. 6) examines a profoundly altered network of human–environment interactions, while the study of viticulture in Layetania (ch. 11) develops a predictive economic model. Prospective readers will also note that the volume is bilingual: five contributions are in Spanish (chs 3, 6, 8, 10 and 11), while the remainder are written in English. This seems an entirely appropriate editorial decision for a cross-border volume and it allows both scholarly traditions (and their associated issues) to be represented directly, although some readers will inevitably find particular case studies less accessible. It also places a greater burden on the editors to provide a cohesive synthesis across linguistic and methodological divisions. The range of research presented is stimulating, but despite this the label of ‘Hispania’ still functions more as a geographical umbrella, rather than a genuinely integrated field of study.
The field-survey and remote-sensing contributions work particularly well when read together. The Terrugem study (ch. 2) illustrates the role of GIS in organising and interpreting distributions recorded through intensive survey. Vilarinho’s assessment of airborne LiDAR and aerial photography (ch. 9) considers both the potential and limitations of increasingly accessible geospatial resources. Fernández Lozano’s reconstruction of lost wetlands at Cádiz (ch. 6) makes a complementary point: before ancient movement or settlement can be modelled meaningfully, it may be necessary to reconstruct a landscape substantially different from that of the present. These studies are at their most persuasive where GIS participates in an iterative relationship between direct archaeological evidence, environmental reconstruction and interpretation. Their wider value depends upon equally explicit treatment of preservation, archaeological visibility, chronological resolution and validation.
Movement and territorial organisation form the collection’s largest thematic group. The reconstruction of terrestrial, riverine and maritime connectivity around Cádiz Bay (ch. 3) appropriately treats mobility as a product of a complex and changing environment. The Carpetania study (ch. 7) similarly moves beyond the principal routes preserved in ancient itineraries to model a more extensive communications network and the positions of secondary centres. The analyses of Conimbriga (ch. 4), the Ambroz Valley (ch. 5) and individual settlements (chs 8 and 10) adopt different combinations of accessibility, visibility, topography and spatial distribution. Taken together, they reveal both the attraction and the difficulty of GIS-based territorial analysis. Routes, catchments and zones of influence provide useful hypotheses. Here, however, perhaps some greater caution is needed: the apparent precision of these results should not disguise the assumptions embedded in the methodology, through cost functions, environmental variables or definitions; it is a useful reminder that any archaeological interpretations must remain proportionate to the evidence and scale of analysis.
The Layetanian viticulture study (ch. 11) is the collection’s most ambitious engagement with a substantive economic question. By combining various methods, most notably geomatic analysis and predictive modelling, it moves beyond the representation of known distributions towards an explanation of productive organisation and networks in the region. This is where the volume is perhaps at its most persuasive: the studies workflow follows from a clearly articulated archaeological problem.
Across the volume, some contributions demonstrate this integration more fully than others. In those contributions where method and research question are less fully integrated, GIS risks becoming a technically competent means of confirming patterns whose wider significance remains uncertain. The final chapter (ch. 12) usefully returns to the potential and limitations of spatial analysis, although it cannot entirely supply the comparative synthesis missing between some of the case studies.
Several recurring issues determine the volume’s overall value: the provenance and compatibility of spatial data, documentation of analytical parameters, representation of uncertainty and reproducibility of results. The balance between technical exposition and historical discussion varies, as does accessibility for readers beyond GIS specialisms, although the consistently high-quality maps and figures are particularly helpful in communicating complex spatial analyses with commendable clarity.
For readers of Britannia, these concerns will be familiar despite the different digital environment created by developer-funded archaeology, local Historic Environment Records and extensive aerial and LiDAR coverage. The Iberian studies provide useful comparanda precisely because they remind us that abundant digital resources cannot, by themselves, resolve the ever-recurrent problems of chronology, archaeological visibility or grounded data validation.
Taken as a whole, GIS Applications in Roman Landscape and Territory offers a timely cross-section of spatial research across Roman Hispania. Its strongest contributions show GIS testing arguments about changing environments, mobility, settlement and production; others remain closer to demonstrations whose historical consequences require further development. The volume does not entirely overcome the geographical and methodological fragmentation identified by its editors, but it makes that uneven research landscape unusually visible. There is much here for specialists in Roman landscapes, archaeological survey and spatial modelling, as well as useful points of comparison for those working in Roman Britain or further afield.
