Archaeogeography is an archaeology discipline that studies the relationship between past archaeological societies and the territory they inhabited. This is a developing academicfield of study and branch of archaeological theory, that deals with the dynamics of space over time and helps to explore other dimensions of geohistorical objects, such as roads, walls, boundaries, and trees. It is both a discipline focusing on road networks and land divisions and an archaeology of geohistorical knowledge.
Spatial archaeology and archaeogeography
Archaeogeography came from the scientific trend called landscape archaeology or spatial archaeology. This trend analyses the interaction between nature and culture. For this reason it uses techniques coming from geography, geology, etc. The spatial archaeology trend was launched by Ian Hodder in 1976. It is an archaeological trend, such as ethnoarchaeology, cognitive archaeology and other archaeological approaches. Spatial Archaeology was defined by David L. Clarke in 1977. He pointed out three analysis levels: macro, micro and semi-micro. Spatial Archaeology is also called landscape archaeology. This trend analyses the interaction between nature and culture. Human geography uses location analysis to define models for the understanding of the territorial organisation. The archaeologists Higgs and Vita-Finzi began to apply Site Catchment Analysis in 1970s. They proposed a new approach to know how people settled in prehistoric societies. They analysed economic resources with tools taken from Human Geography, these resources were 5-10km from the archaeological sites. Some years later, in the 1970s, Spatial Archaeology was created, based on the use of several tools taken from 1960s English Human Geography that was focus on the study of location interdependence. Some archaeologists use these geographical techniques. But these techniques were only used in isolated contexts. They did not fully constitute an archaeological method and lacked a theoretical basis. In the 1980s some archaeologists began to criticize the classical view of Site Catchment Analysis. The reason was related to the lack of a general method to study archaeological territory. In 1989, :es:Javier de Carlos Izquierdo|Javier de Carlos said that archaeology was only able to apply geographical techniques without being able to use a procedure integrated in a method.
Seeing and mapping complexity
Archaeology is a very map-based discipline. It uses geographic information systems and maps of sites, landscapes, regions, and countries in order to visualize artifact and feature distributions, analyse site relationships, and to demonstrate landscape variability and effects. As an archaeological sub-discipline, archaeogeography is also highly map-oriented. Researchers create planar maps from orthophotos, then layer on historical data. This includes multiple layers of historical data on the same map, allowing them to better see the duration and durability of past and present forms within a landscape. Indeed, " specificity of archeogeographic analysis thus resides in combining the various levels -- configurations, relief patterns, and archaeological traces -- within a single map, along with as much historical, geographic, and environmental data as possible".
The discipline is taught in France and Portugal. A is given by the . Archaeogeography is also included in of Centro de Estudos de Arqueologia, Artes e Ciências do Património.
