Os sistemas de informação geográfica na detecção de "villae" em meio rural no Portugal romano

The increasing development of projects based on Geographic Information Systems as allowed the enlargement of the initial scope of its applications, strictly geographical, to other specializations, namely on the archaeological field. The study of the application regarding the Geographical Information Systems on the Archaeological analysis of the Architectural Heritage allowed us to transform an initial idea (1998) into a doctoral thesis (2003), as we intend to demonstrate with this dissertation.
The purpose of this work is to exploit the capacity of the Geographical Information Systems –GIS by associating the geographical and environmental factors to the traditional archaeological models, designating them by Geographic-Archaeological Information Systems -GisArcheo. In this new area of research we can ?nd three different, though complementary, kinds of application models which can be used on the GisArchaeo investigation. The present work is focused on the experimental application of the model Localization of Sites and Management of Cultural Resources on Uillæ in rural roman Portugal.
The traditional archaeological methods for the experiment of a predictive model to locate Uillæ are particularly well described in what concerns the survey and record, exploiting the procedures that may be converted into digital format with the minimization which is inherent to this process, so that we can establish a methodology on the elaboration of the models. For this purpose we also analyse international experiences on this subject, whenever they could be compared to our reality in terms of space, time and shape, so that we can establish widely accepted criteria regarding the manipulation of information and a fair representation of the selected cases for the implementation of the model.
The implementation of an experimental GisArchaeo model based on ten studied cases has allowed us to identify other areas with similar values and where, in the absence of records, we now must set careful plans of prospecting and sounding. With this method we can presume the archaeological potentiality of a region.
Before us is, therefore, a powerful aid in the management of cultural resources which, in addition to the diffusion of information, contributes for the defense of the cultural heritage, as well as for an integrated management of the re-arrangement of the territory.