Mapping the past: using ethnography and local spatial knowledge to characterize the Duero river borderlands landscape

Abstract

The Duero River borderland between Spain and Portugal is a region marked by historic geographic isolation and more recently by economic marginalization. Acknowledged for not only its biodiversity, the cultural landscape is also distinguished by its archaeological, historic, and ethnographic heritage. Due to massive socioeconomic outmigration and a prevalent cultural disdain for the countryside, there is a developing disconnection of the collective memory among village residents with the cultural landscape and its agropastoral past. In this study, the principles of the Historic Landscape Characterization methodology and the ideals established by the European Landscape Convention of 2000 are implemented due to their goals of community engagement and awareness raising of the value of cultural landscapes. A strong ethnographic component has been applied to this research whereby residents in interviews characterize the landscape through the recollection of its toponyms and past agropastoral land use. The data acquired from the interviews are input into a GIS as ethnographic layers to complement the empirical landscape analyses. This aggregation of information is placed into a final series of maps for residents and regional authorities to access, use, and learn from the unique landscape history of the region. The value of the analysis is twofold: (1) it contributes to the interpretation of the historical development of the Duero River transborder landscape; and (2) it demonstrates the role of incorporating an ethnographic approach into an archaeological landscape analysis.