Territorialidades de la prehistoria reciente mallorquina

Abstract

The principal aim of this doctoral thesis is to define "territorialities" through the spatial relations which are established between the different types of habitation and burial sites in the late prehistory of Mallorca and, a series of geographic variables which have remained practically unchanged throughout the course of time. In this way, this PhD proposes a markedly methodological approach in view of the interpretations of these relations which are attemts at an approximation to bring together a methodology which emerges from the geography (GIS Geographical Information Systems) through the archeeology.Assuming that a series of geographical variables have not altered considerably during the course of the island's history, it seems feasible to propose that the past ecosystems have not varied ostensibly. In this way, a geoarchaeological data base was compiled, from an enviromental point of view, wich contains all the Mallorca prehistoric sites with their geocode and contextual references, achieving in this way one of the main aim of this work. An objective which will have to be contrasted in the future with paleoecological studies which take into account archaeological invetigations within a much wider time frame. The PhD structure consist in two volummes: T1. The first one comprises five chapters, where the investigations carried out in relation to the geoarcheological data base are laid out, as well as the glossary of the abbreviations employed in the volummes and the bibliography. T2.The second volumme contains the geoarcheological data base which was developed and employed to carry out this PhD. In the first volumme, the chapters contents are: Chapter. 1: Sets out the key elements wich constitute the theoretical approach employed in this PhD. It is important to point out that I have not included a detailed descripstion of the Geographical Information Systems (G.I.S), in view of the fact it is not a socio-geographical theory teoría explicativa in itself but rather a instrumental methodology for this investigation; it is dealt with more detail in the following section. Chapter. 2: Deals with the decisions, the problems and other methodological and technical aspects which emerged during the process of fitting toghether the G.I.S. and the empirical Mallorcan archaeological information. I also include the development of the various levels of relation and the processes of the work that I have designed for putting into use a system of these characteristics with the archaeological invetigation later Prehistory of the Balearic islands. Chapter. 3: Centres on the first treatment of the qeoarcheological data base. In this chapter the spatial "behaviour" of the Mallorcan later Prehistoric, structural, archaeological evidence are described and characterised, taking into account the geographical variables. From this starting point, we have searched in the empirical data the possibility of determining, in a preliminary way, a series of trends which will be useful for the interpretation of the later prehistoric "territorialities". Chapter. 4: Encompasses the second treatament of the data base. In this chapter the three stages in the process of the analysis of the empirical data are developed. This study us to deal with three main areas: a) to clear up the spatial relationships in which the structural archaeological evidence was geographically organised. b) determine the position of each and every type of structural unit within the models of spatial relations cited earlier. A position which takes into account the territorial expression of the Mallorcan prehistoric communities, bearing in mind that it is in these, where the structural space concept and the nature of the selection of a settlement area converge. c) establish the recurrent level in the territorial expressions of each structural type, with the aim of feterminig what spatial " behaviours " converge. In this way, the physical expressions and the spatial materializations of the territories of the Mallorcan prehistoric communities are marked out allowing us to attain an operative level for historical interpretation. Chapter 5. Conclusions. An historical time frame is given to the converging spatial " behaviours ". 'A chronological frame is defined for each of the different types of structural units; those which are synchronic and constitute proper later Mallorcan prehistoric temporalities of territory are determined. Following this an historical explanation is attempted, in the light of the different types of socio-economic reproduction stragies of communities which formed territorialities in the later prehistory of Mallorca, which is shaped via the resulting trends from the territorial variables concurrences.

Date of Award	21 Nov 1995
Original language	Undefined/Unknown
Supervisor	Encarnación Sanahuja Yll (Director)