Tendencias de uso del suelo en el Valle Amblés (Ávila, España)de la Edad del Hierro al Medievo

Abstract

This paper constitutes the continuation of a previous one (Blanco González, 2008) with which it shares objectives, study area and methodology. Both try to offer a dyachronic interpretation of the ancient human occupation of the Amblés Valley (Ávila). This time the paper includes information from the Late Iron Age to the Middle Ages (c. 1250 AD). In particular the territorial analysis has been focused on a fundamental economic settlement issue: the access of the direct producers to the agrarian resources from the residential nuclei. With this objective, the agrarian potentiality has been measured from the grounds within the exploitation territories of a selected series of archaeological sites and modern villages. The information on the considered archaeological sites �of presumable residential functionality� comes from extensive and intensive field surveys as much as from some excavations. The agrologic quality of the grounds whithin its surroundings has been Vigilquantified by means of the routine of a GIS which calculates the accessible land surfaces for a half-an-hour walk and an one-hour walk from each site. The findings, ordered per times, are expressed in hectares of the different agrologic classes and they appear by means of graphical summaries. The greatest discontinuity settles down in the Late Iron Age, which links the prehistoric tendency of strong imbalance on the represented land uses �conditioned by technological locational factors or symbolic/political ones� and the historical tendency �of clear economic orientation� characterized by a strict balance among them. The interpretation of the historic process attended �despite its discontinuity caused by a lack of data� informs about the different rates on agrarian intensification, productive diversification and socio-political integration in the zone, reaching its algid moment at the end of the studied sequence.