Aportaciones de los Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG) al estudio histórico del Concejo de Jaén en la Baja Edad Media

Abstract

After a long war, the Christian Kingdom of Castile of the mid-13th century occupied Jaen territory expelling the Muslims. This is the scenary of the violent suppresion of a social formation, the Muslim almohade, and the setting up of a completely different political and socioeconomic regimen: the imposed by the Kingdom of Castile in the aftermath. The researching project developed by Área de Historia Medieval, University of Jaén is mainly aimed to: Exposes and analyzes those historical facts which accompained the setting up and consolidation in Jaen territory of one of the more complex of the spatial organization units in the Castilian feudal society: the Concejo or townand- land community. Its territorial impact will be studied through poblation; settlement¿s spatial hierarchy; distribution and explotation of productive spaces; natural resources, its property and social distribution; new cultivable areas; the defence system, etc. A further and deeper lecture of sources and contemporary chronicles was a previous requisite with a later contrast and integration with archaeological data. In the praxis, the considerable amount of data, sources and origins (written, place names, archaeological sites and works, etc.) and the wide time covered might brought a mere studies's superposition. From analysis point of view that danger can be avoid using technics of data management in order to represent them after their integrative analysis. Thus, a GIS enables to store and manage those numerous data together with some spatial analysis. Finally an impecable thematic cartography was constructed with them. This paper will describe some of the GIS applications and their results.