Los puertos antiguos de Cartagenageoarqueología, arqueología portuaria y paisaje marítimo: un estudio desde la arqueología náutica

Abstract

This thesis presents a new study of the ancient harbour city of Cartagena between the third century B.C. and the sixth century A.D. Harbour areas of the old city have been little studied, partly because of the difficulty of accessing to a highly transformed landscape, the scarcity of archaeological sources and the use of an analytical perspective that did not understand the complexity of the maritime world or Roman harbours. With this thesis we intend to answer a series of specific research questions that will help us to advance the study of maritime space of the ancient city from a multidisciplinary perspective. Therefore, it has been applied: (1) Harbour Geoarchaeology, with the aim of restoring not only the ancient coastal landscape (thanks to ARQUEOTOPOS project), but also the underwater landscape and harbour areas; (2) On the other hand, archaeological data and other sources of study have been reinterpreted and analysed from the perspective of nautical archaeology. It has been carried out an underwater archaeological research of the seabed of the harbour with the aim of obtaining new data for the study of anchorage areas in antiquity. (3) Finally, it has been applied the archaeological study of the ancient maritime cultural landscape by developing GIS tools. The successful implementation of this set of different methods is what we call Harbour Archaeology. The interpretation of all the conclusions obtained by these different methods has allowed us to characterize, define and perform a series of proposals for the harbour areas of the city in different time periods: Punic period, Roman Republican period, Roman high Imperial period and late Roman period. All this has enabled us not only to define a key topographical and urbanistic space of the ancient city, but to highlight its main value, which throughout history allowed him to survive: the harbour and the Sea