Abstract:

A wide range of archaeological work has been carried out in Tarragona, from the inception of this science in the renaissance in the 16th century to today. It is due to this, that we have found it necessary to organise and register all studies performed in this city, so that they may be included in the diachronic context of the city. This task has been improved tremendously through the use of a software application, even if it was not intentionally designed for archaeological work. We refer to the GIS, a key tool in working in any city with some cultural heritage. Proof of this can be seen in the archaeological maps – obtained through use of this software- detailed in this symposium. Therefore we would like to present our work with a design of a GIS-based program and aiming at efficient archaeological management. To start with we include a little background experience, detailing previous (individual or collective) experience, of those who tried to classify and establish some order in the archaeological data for this city, which was in a rather bad state. Thereafter, we describe the program’s key functions, its organisation and applications, developed in some of the projects of the archaeological stud of Tarraco Finally we focus on Archaeological Planimetry of Tarraco, a project encouraged by the Tarragona City Council Museum, the (ICAC), and the Generalitat de Catalunya for its publishing. We will therefore show how different layers of data registered by means of GIS, along with historic cartography of a city can be used to analyse archaeological problems of otherwise unresolved. This method will be applied when validating Tarraco’s urban morphology proposed by Macias (2000a).