Figure 3 - uploaded by Ramón Fábregas Valcarce
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Detail of the density of Least-Cost-Paths and accumulative viewsheds in the mounds at the top of Serra do Barbanza.
Source publication
Funerary mounds, whether megalithic or not, feature prominently among the Galician archaeology and their sheer number and monumentality have attracted the attention of scholars ever since the end of the 19th century. The Barbanza peninsula, set in the western coast of Galicia, stands out for its numerous barrows, with a noticeable cluster of those...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... monuments are very scarce in those intermediate altitudes, which -in the Barbanza peninsula-are characterized by the presence of strong slopes. The analysis of the monuments in our inventory suggests the existence of a strong relationship between mounds and LCPs, especially in the case of the cluster located at the top of the Sierra del Barbanza (Figures 2 and 3) -where all the megaliths located on or immediately adjacent to those areas have a higher probability of being walked, as Llobera (2015) has already reported-and also in several areas of the coastal platform. The results of the GLM specifically comparing mounds and random points show that the variable LCP density is significantly different and thus the proximity to areas that are more likely to have played an important role in the movement across the Barbanza peninsu- la would be a useful predictor for the position of barrows (Table 1). ...
Context 2
... is not the case for the variable "distance to LCP", which -unlike in former analyses (Rodríguez-Rellán & Fábregas, I.P.)-does not seem to be statistically relevant. The distribution of mounds regarding the other variables considered in this paper shows how mounds tend to be mainly located in those places with a low horizon height and a high sky-view factor: that is, in open spaces with no ma- jor topographic obstacles hampering their conspicuousness (Figure 3). Being | 95 | 2018 built in these areas, mounds may have been able to act as local horizons and thus become significant landmarks. ...
Similar publications
Monuments as such implicitly have a perennial charac- ter and act as a presumed means for consecrating or marking out especial places. This would be the case with megalithic mounds, which add their funerary character to the afore- mentioned features.
However, in recent decades an increasing emphasis has been placed on the relationship between megal...
Citations
... For the past 30 years, archaeologists have extensively studied the "megalithic phenomenon" in the Barbanza region [25][26][27][28]. This wealth of field data on the location of numerous burial mounds makes Barbanza an ideal case study to evaluate our integrated AI, remote sensing, and fieldwork validation approach. ...
The increasing relevance of remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) for archaeological research and cultural heritage management is undeniable. However, there is a critical gap in this field. Many studies conclude with identifying hundreds or even thousands of potential sites, but very few follow through with crucial fieldwork validation to confirm their existence. This research addresses this gap by proposing and implementing a fieldwork validation pipeline. In northern Portugal’s Alto Minho region, we employed this pipeline to verify 237 potential burial mounds identified by an AI-powered algorithm. Fieldwork provided valuable information on the optimal conditions for burial mounds and the specific factors that led the algorithm to err. Based on these insights, we implemented two key improvements to the algorithm. First, we incorporated a slope map derived from LiDAR-generated terrain models to eliminate potential burial mound inferences in areas with high slopes. Second, we trained a Vision Transformer model using digital orthophotos of both confirmed burial mounds and previously identified False Positives. This further refines the algorithm’s ability to distinguish genuine sites. The improved algorithm was then tested in two areas: the original Alto Minho validation region and the Barbanza region in Spain, where the location of burial mounds was well established through prior field work.
The perceptibility of a prehistoric monument (the property of being perceptible from its surrounding landscape) can be quite difficult to analyse by means of traditional static models. Such difficulty lies in the fact that perceptibility depends upon many other factors beyond simple topographical position, such as size, colour, contrast with the surroundings or even the specific circumstances of the audience, many such circumstances being of an immaterial nature. In this paper, we explore the potential use of Agent-Based Modelling for the analysis of archaeological perceptibility.
As anywhere else around the world, GIS is an essential tool in Galician Archaeology (NW Spain) when examining and analysing spatial data. This is also true for the study of mounds in that area, since spatial analysis and statistics have become increasingly used for contrasting hypotheses regarding the locational preferences of these monuments, usually inferred from observations made during fieldwork or taken from studies conducted elsewhere. Drawing on this basis, in this paper, we have analysed the locational patterns of the tumuli of the upper tracts of the Serra do Barbanza (Galicia, NW Spain). Using a site-predictive modelling approach, several environmental covariates were analysed in order to explore their potential role in explaining the distribution of prehistoric mounds in the area. Subsequently, we studied the clustering of these monuments via second-order modelling. Our results suggest that tumuli in the Serra do Barbanza tended to cluster on a very local scale, a trend that can only be explained by intended site spacing strategies that may have taken place over millennia. Finally, by using significance testing via Monte Carlo Simulation, we have modelled both the effect of possible preferences regarding the location of mounds and the potential impact of tradition, with pre-existent megaliths possibly fostering the construction of more monuments in the nearby areas.
