Articles by Vincent Gaffney

An international team of scholars from Croatia, Canada, Britain and Slovenia is attempting to analyse the human adaptation of nature on the Central Dalmatian islands in Croatia. Archaeological data and various forms of environmental information were integrated into a GIS. This system is an ideal platform for a variety of analytical procedures: the economy of past societies was analysed, territories of larger communities were modelled, trade routes were predicted and the positioning of different sites was observed. In this paper, special emphasis is paid to the GIS application of a sites and monuments database in the analysis of the perception of space using the data from the Bronze Age.

The authors illustrate the application of a GIS technology within the field of historical archaeology. They discuss a GIS pilot study of the Adriatic island of Hvar in Croatia, using the Geographical Resource Analysis Support System (GRASS), a Unix based software. Basic data was obtained through a survey of all the archaeological monuments on the island. In contrast to Greek literary sources, the GIS application gives a different perspective of the historical Greek colonisation of the island of Hvar (385/4 BC). In fact, after founding Pharos, there is no evidence of permanent Greek settlements extending beyond the plane, so the life of native communities would have continued unchanged.