University of Southampton OCS (beta), CAA 2012

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Tides across space: new approaches in understanding maritime cultural landscape dynamics.
Rodrigo Pacheco-Ruiz

Last modified: 2012-02-26

Abstract


Since the Late Bronze Age, Europe could be imagined as a complex global network of social relationships. For later prehistory there is sufficient evidence for long-distance trade, assuming strong links, between sites connected by land. Evidence for this long distance trade is also reflected throughout the European Atlantic coastline. However, in these instances, the only way that these sites could have developed such a connection would have been across the water. 

While this is broadly agreed, inferences of movement/seafaring have been skewed towards the synchronic nature of such artefact distributions. This has genereated gaps that are fundamental to cover in order to understand a diachronic pheneomenon such as movement. Using the Isles of Scilly as a case study and by the incorporation of hydrodynamic models within a 4d GIS environment (space/time) This paper will provide solid theoretical and analytical framework, of global applicability, which can be used in subsequent studies of maritime connectivity and social interaction.


Keywords


Isles of Scilly; 4d GIS; temporal GIS; Hydrodynamic modelling; seafaring; prehistory; movement; transport