Spatial Technologies in Archaeology

I am an archaeologist specialised in the Roman world and in Computer Applications in Archaeology, specifically in the use of Geographic Information Systems and Statistics for spatial analysis and in Digital Archives.

I graduated in History (specialisations of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology) by the University of Seville (Seville, Spain), and worked as field archaeologist in several places in Spain. In 2008 I won a PhD scholarship at the Pablo de Olavide University (Seville, Spain) to carry out a doctoral research about the Romanisation of the former province of Hispania Ulterior Baetica from the perspective of the territory and its evolution between Pre-Roman times (Iron Age II) to the Early Roman Empire (Moreno Escobar, 2011; 2012). At the end of 2008, I came to the University of Southampton to study the MSc Archaeological Computing (Spatial Technologies in Archaeology), where I started to work also for the Portus Project performing different roles as field archaeologist, as researcher and illustrator of site drawings, and as manager of the GIS Archive. Ever since, I have participated in other research projects, such as the Roman Villas in Baetica Project, the Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Project: exploring the impact of colonialism and colonisation in the Indian Ocean, and in the ARCA Project, as a creator and developer of an online database which stores information about more than 2400 archaeological sites in the South of Spain.

Nowadays, I am finishing my PhD thesis and working for the PortusLimen Project as a GIS specialist. Specifically I am dealing with the spatial dimension of the archaeological record of the Roman ports to be studied within this Project and with the creation and organisation of the Project’s GIS Archive.

The PortusLimen Project will collect information regarding the Archaeology and Geomorphology of more than 30 Roman ports across the Mediterranean Sea, as well as iconographic, epigraphic and literary references to these ports, information which will be spatially georeferenced within the Mediterranean area in order to help enable the project to answer its research questions. One of my tasks within the PortusLimen Project will be to create and develop a geodatabase as well as a GIS digital archive that will be populated with these data in order to make possible the use of this vast corpus of information in an accessible and simple way. One other task related intimately with the previous one will be the description not only of the process of creation the GIS Archive, but also of the data included on it, following existing standards (e.g. Archaeology Data Service) and making use of thesauri (e.g. English Heritage Thesaurus), in order to make possible the reuse of these data by other researchers in the future.

Bibliography

Moreno-Escobar, M.C. (2013): “ARCA: Creating and Integrating Archaeological Databases” In G. Earl, T. Sly, A. Chrysanthi, P. Murrieta-Flores, C. Papadopoulos, I. Romanowska & D. Wheatley (Eds.): CAA2012 Proceedings of the 40th Conference in Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Southampton, United Kingdom, 26-30 March 2012: 44-456. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Moreno-Escobar, M.C. & García Sanjuán, L. (2013): “Sistematización e informatización del inventario de yacimientos arqueológicos de Tierras de Antequera: la base de datos ARCA” Menga. Revista de Prehistoria de Andalucía, 4: 217-233.

Moreno-Escobar, M.C. (2012): “The occupation of the Antequera Depression (Malaga, Spain) through the 1st millenium BC: A geographical and archaeologícal perspective into Romanisation”. In S.J. Kluiving, & E.B. Guttmann-Bond, E. B. (Eds.): Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science – From a multi- to an interdisciplinary approach: 319-352. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Moreno-Escobar, M.C. (2011): “Romanización, paisaje y territorio en las Tierras de Antequera (Málaga, España): Estudio del cambio cultural a través del análisis arqueológico espacial” Romvla, 10: 43-69.

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