Testare sul campo la Least Cost Path Analysis: riflessioni intorno ai paesaggi dell’età del Bronzo della Sardegna centro-meridionale (Italia)

For about ten years this research team has been experimenting with techniques of spatial and visual perceptual analysis using GIS on the Nuragic landscapes (Middle and Late Bronze Age) of different areas of southern Sardinia. Over time, various field campaigns have been developed on the monumental manifestations produced by the Nuragic communities; towers, fortresses, villages, tombs of giants and sacred wells suggest a marked attention to the display of a message of power, strength and monumentality on the part of the human group studied. An aspect often emphasized by these researches is the relationship of monuments with mobility and with the routes and strategic points of the territory, often verified through matches of different LCPAs that cross the territory by connecting different patterns of points. However, the real efficiency of the paths predicted by the GIS has never been directly tested on the ground. The paper presents the result of field analyzes by our group of archaeologists on the paths resulting from the GIS analysis in the Marmilla territories: travel times, energy expenditure and the real possibility of a path to actually cross a given territory are provided. Working with the LCPAs is still to be explored, however it remains a valid tool, if an analysis unrelated to preconceptions and with a holistic evidence framework is carried out, for territorial research.