- Recovery and analysis of rural and paleoenvironmental data available -

Considering the extent of the rural area that was situated in the immediate dependence on the Roman town of Bracara Augusta we consider as a fundamental task of the project to select areas to be deeply studied using different sources of information and differentiated analytical methodologies. Therefore, the aim of this task is to define areas for detailed analysis of the territory, which may easily be articulated with the urban and periurban spaces.

This selection of the study areas requires a competent choice, once they must combine a good research potential from the viewpoint of the nature, the variability and the chronology of the archaeological sites, as well as in terms of its potential for palaeoenvironemental analysis, providing conditions for the analysis and interpretation of the regional sedimentation processes and for the execution of pollinic surveys, allowing the establishment of a paleoclimatic and a paleovegetal reference frameworks.

These areas should also be chosen according to its information potentialities, either with regard to the toponymic records, either in what refers to the review of available historical data. Therefore, we will seek to make a prior assessment of the information provided by the oldest historical sources with a view to check which areas of the territory are more referred in such documents.

- Topographic analysis, mapping and modeling of the urban evolution -

The acknowledgment of the existence of the urban planning of Bracara Augusta was the subject to a first proposal for the urban design with road axis aligned N/NO-S/SE and quarters, with a square form (120 Roman feet wide).

Many issues require yet to be solved concerning the occupation of the periurban area, where buildings were settled with diverging directions of the orthogonal grid, having been embraced by the late Roman wall built in the late third century / beginning of the IV.

On the basis of the analysis of some domus evolution it was possible to realize an increasing tendency to construct over porticoes and street areas, process which was intensified in Low Empire and Late Antiquity.

This trend requires a chronological refining which will be achieved within the scope of Task 1, through the detailed study of the buildings evolution and the analysis of the way how they are adapted or ignore the foundational street infrastructure.

One important issue of this task is related to the analysis of landforms occupied by the Roman city, both in the High and in the Low Empire, since it was implanted over a hill. The adapting of the urban grid to the specificities of the micro topography needs to be reviewed in the context of a comprehensive morphological study of the site. It should also be undertaken a recovery of the highest points of the Roman and Late Antiquity cities supplied by the review of information from the archaeological areas already excavated (Task 1), aiming to proceed with the restitution of ancient town topography.

The implementation of this task requires an intense work of relationship of data provided by the cartographic analysis, the topographic mapping and the production of interpretative overviews of the urban landscape evolution.

- Analysis of urban constructive contexts -

During the last 35 years several excavations were held in urban area of Braga which has evidenced features corresponding to the orthogonal design of the Roman city of Bracara Augusta. Since most of the excavations carried out in Braga have not yet been systematically studied in order to define the chronologic phases of buildings, which involves an exhaustive study of the artifacts associated with archaeological sequences, it has been impossible so far to establish precisely the changes of the urban foundational layout.

The only methodology to approach the changing of the urban landscape undergoes a systematic study of constructive information available, which requires a refinement of the chronological occupation sequences, with phases of renewal and abandonment, as well as superposition by other structures dated from Late Antiquity or Medieval times.

Therefore, this task comprises an accurate stratigraphic review, the analysis of available construction contexts and the study of artifacts which could provide finer chronologies. The accurate dating of the buildings with regards to its foundation, reforming and abandonment, as well as the construction of new equipment’s overlapping the former can provide consistent evidence for the evolution of urban topography in the long duration.

This task aims to obtain consistent chronological information of building changes but also spatial and topographical data, particularly relating to the processes of ground adjustment which may enable the execution of Task 2.

Changing Landscapes. Bracara Augusta and its territory (V-VII centuries)