- GIS development and data capture -

The goals of this task consist in the implementation of a GIS able to store and to manage the alphanumerical, graphic and cartographical data collected during the different project phases used and produced by the distinct researchers, both for the analysis of the urban and rural landscape.

The achievement of this task will pass through various phases. The first one will consist in the design and drawing of GIS, which comprises an alphanumeric relational database and a graphic database. Such phase must be developed after accomplishing the Task 3, which should supply an evaluation of the different types of data to be introduced in the system in respect to the analysis of rural areas. Also within the Task 1 shall be valued and identified the indicators which will provide the description and characterization of the urban space.

A second phase is related with the loading of the system, with its validation and with the establishment of an interface with the SIABRA (Archaeological Information System Bracara Augusta), designed for recording and managing the data from the archaeological excavations carried out in Braga. Therefore it is necessary to develop a computing user interface, which enables to create a platform between both systems.

- Analysis and mapping of the historical data -

This task is designed to reference the information offered by the most ancient historical documents available for the territory of Braga, with a view to recover elements that allow us to characterize the occupation of the territory and the rural landscape of the city to most remote periods, using a regressive analysis.

All the physical elements of the landscape reported by the written documentation (sites, structures, buildings, landmarks, roads, vegetation, watercourses and ditches) will be worked consistently with a view to its further cartography. We will try to identify records that will allow us to better understanding the articulation between the city and the countryside and to understand its organization. Based on this analysis we will seek to verify in what way the medieval properties does use or not oldest boundaries, namely those which may correspond to the alignments of the Roman cadastre. Based upon the cartography of the high medieval farms, villas and monasteries we will seek to understand potential events of physical continuum of the Roman farming units or its replacement by other exploitation sites.

The documentary basis to be used in this task is composed by the cartulary organized by the Diocese of Braga, between the XII and XIII centuries, where it’s ecclesiastic and seigniorial rights were registered since the former suede organization in the VI century.

- Paleoenvironmental  analysis -

Within the time period covered by this project this task aims to do a palaeoenvironmental approach to the region under study. In this sense, this research will be developed with the information already available from the urban excavations carried out in Braga and with the physical and biological paleoenvironmental data that it is expected to be recovered in the context of the studies carried out in the surrounding town area.

Under the first line of research special attention will be given to an attempt to rebuild the evolution of paleotopographic landforms where the city was implanted as well as its immediate surroundings. The second line of research under this task will focus on the identification, recording and analyzing of the morpho-pedo-sedimentary indicators and as well as the biological ones, especially the paleobotanical which may provide a first approximation to the landscape reconstruction of the area surrounding the Roman town of Bracara Augusta.

Because the landscape study requires a permanent change in its scales of analysis (in this case, from regional scale to micro-regional and local ones) as well as the use of each one individually or in combination it seems to us methodologically relevant to underline this aspect, given its importance as an irreplaceable research tool, where the both the versatility and the outlook of the overall standing will be key strategies in the scope of this research.

- Field survey and mapping of the selected rural areas -

The implementation of systematic field surveys shall be preceded by preliminary works necessary for ensuring the higher profitability in obtaining data. In this way, it is essential for examination the available cartography in different scales and also the execution of methodical evaluation of the available air covers for the region. Furthermore, the areas to be studied must be surveyed in different seasons of the year, in order to minimize the impacts resulting from differential land use.

Performing systematic surveys in the selected areas to be studied in detail have as main objectives: The precise mapping the archaeological sites already known and surveyed for the region involved; Recognizing, identifying and mapping of other archaeological sites, which shall allow a better picture of the systematic occupation of the rural areas; Acknowledge and detailed mapping of the Roman and medieval roads in the region, in a view to achieve greater precision of the road networks, which may have possibly functioned as property boundaries; Acknowledge and mapping of the traces of the Roman cadaster, based on the alignments already detected by air photography and cartography, which can be found fossilized in different ways (fences, paths, hedges, markers or other types of limits); Identifying and mapping of the property boundaries, in particular, roads, irrigation and drainage canals, cippi and other demarcation monuments, related with the agrarian parceling; Identifying and mapping of the data collected from historical sources, a process that is closely linked to Task 7; Investigate the sites where diagnosis archaeological surveys may be carried out, either to date ancient fossil soils, either to achieve chronologies for equipment’s associated with the exploitation of the territory.

- Evaluation and selection of rural research areas - 

The actions to be developed in the context of Task 3 shall create the conditions required for a judicious evaluating and selection of the rural areas to be deeply investigated by a multidisciplinary review.

 Under this task shall be assessed the informative potential of the region around the city of Braga, with an emphasis on the density of archaeological sites, on the higher or lesser potential of the areas to carry out paleoenvironmental observations and analysis, on the concentration of sites with place names connected with possessors and on the areas with the oldest and richest historical records.

The evaluation of the informative potential of historical sources shall also weigh in the selection of the areas to be deeply studied. For the effect one should examine the kind of information contained in them concerning the property organization, their markers, the detailed limits descriptions or the type of cultures. This evaluation requires that in the framework of Task 3 field characterization tests took place, concerning the mapping of historic data, mainly the one related with the limits of properties.