New approaches to maritime visibility: a compared study of traditional mathematical methods, GIS application and experimental archaeology

Abstract

Despite the ability of ancient seafarers to sail directly across open water, the visible shoreline has been always an important factor in navigation. Schüle (1968), applied arithmetic principles to study maritime visibility, but in recent times, the spatial analysis with GIS has been shown as a successful approach to study the archaeological landscape, for example «fuzzy visibility». We will apply these techniques to study the maritime visibility. Through this poster we study maritime visibility using three complementary approaches: mathematical methods, visibility analysis with GIS and visibility tested by ethnology and experimental archaeology. The study case is «Cabo de Palos» area, and it allows us to analyse different kinds of visibility using as control points archaeological sites. The dialogue between the results of these three analyses will allow us to adjust and improve the initial models and to obtain quantifiable data which will be used to interpret more precisely the maritime landscape.