|
Nowadays the study of pre/protohistoric communities is performed by archaeologists taking account either the information gathered from field work surveys and excavations or the characteristics of the surrounding landscape, on the basis of a multi-disciplinary approach. The region considered in the present research is located in central Italy, northwest of Rome, between the Bolsena Lake and the Tyrrhenian Sea. This area exhibits two different landscape typologies represented by the Albegna and Fiora rivers catchments where more than 300 archaeological sites have been detected. The analysis has concerned only 112 sites corresponding to graveyards and settlements, whose respective geographical coordinates have allowed us to gather peculiar environmental parameters. These ones have been obtained from different data sets: the six TM bands of a LANDSAT subscene; a digital elevation model (DEM), with derived thematic maps; hydrological and hydrogeological features extracted from suitable scale maps. The hydrological data are represented by streams branches, drainage divides, main spring sites, lakes and sea cost lines, piezometric contours (to assess water table depth), hydrogeological unit identifications (to provide lithological and permeability information). The obtained parameters are: morphometric (i.e. elevation, slope, aspect, local relief and morphometric code from the DEM), spectral (i.e. the TM values of the Landsat data) and hydrological (minimum distance from water resources, water table depth). They have been processed by applying a hierarchical clustering technique separately to the morphometric and spectral parameters, achieving as a result the partitioning of the sites into meaningful classes, characterized by different morphology, land cover and physical status. The obtained groups of sites have been examined with respect to their typological and chronological descriptions.
|
