Connecting the Archaeological Site of Italica (Spain) to its Landscape: A Three-Step Method to Unveil and Enhance Landscape Values through the Design of Cultural Routes

Abstract

The intricate character of the landscape is one of the main difficulties when reaching an agreement on its values. This information is, however, essential to manage the landscape, a process which relies on methodologies that recognise those values and/or identifies. In this paper, the analytical methodology for an integrated plan of the territory is reviewed, and a method is presented to design cultural routes as a strategy for connecting the archaeological sites to their landscapes by restoring the dynamics of landscape formation in their immediate environments. Using the area surrounding the archaeological site of the Roman city of Italica in Andalusia (Spain) as a case study, actions and processes are identified that can enable projects based on ‘cultural routes’ to restore the dynamics of landscape formation, highlighting those processes that allow us to recognise the landscape values and to extract some of the landscape’s characteristic features.