Using Place Names for Mapping the Distribution of Vanishing Historical Landscape Features: The Agras Field System in Northwest Spain

Abstract This paper explores the potential for using place names for the identification of historical landscape features characteristic of the agras field system in Northwest Spain. We first evaluated statistically the significance of a set of targeted place names as predictors of agras presence. We then analysed the spatio-temporal distribution of agras using place names from historical records and rural cadastre cartography. Results indicated that there was a significant correspondence between selected terms and agras spatial distribution. Field names showed a strong inertia in time, remaining despite recent land use changes but also in a long-term context, as they indicate the former presence of agras in a coastal sector that disappeared around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our findings suggest that identification of historical landscape features by means of place names could be of interest for further landscape research, with application in landscape inventory, monitoring and landscape restoration.

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