Puertos y espacios portuarios entre la Antigüedad y la Alta Edad Media: nuevos escenarios de investigación

Abstract

In the recent years, harbours and anchorages have suffered an important research renewaleffort. New methods and techniques allows us to a better analysis of the different realities thatconform the harbor contexts. Since the classical architectural studies, passing to maritimearchaeology, nautical implications, geoarchaeology, epigraphy, the social and religious realitieson city-harbour, trade and economy or, most recently, maritime landscape, have been some of themost signifcant subMect of analysis.They are of great interest the research results obtained with the implementation ofgeoarchaeological techniques. The data provided by this methodology now allows a closerapproach to the evolutionary history of ancient harbours. On the other hand, new discoveriesboth in coastal environments such as underwater, are showing that the study on harbour contextscan be much more complex than a simple analysis of structures. These techniques, together withthe study of the maritime landscape are leading to a sub-discipline with its own methodologicaldevelopment, port archaeology.Over the next pages, we intend to present a review of how harbours and anchorages have beenstudied by different scholars and the techniques employed, mainly on Spain. The chronologicalscope of this worN has a diachronic approach, liNe on the maMority of harbours studies, focusedsince the antiquity to the medieval times, when the mediterranean harbour system, change in amore complex network.