Study Regions – Zakros Valley – Cetina Valley
The EUROFRONT team is working in two study regions:
- the Zakros Valley on the island of Crete, a part of modern-day Greece,
- the Cetina Valley in the region of Dalmatia, a part of modern-day Croatia.
These two areas were selected because of the rich geospatial and historical datasets that are available for study. Little archaeological research has been carried out on the later periods of history, so there is a great potential to learn more about historical frontiers by studying these two regions.
Both countries have robust histories of geophysical and spatial documentation. In Croatia, the Republika Hrvatska Državne Geodetske Uprave (Republic of Croatia State Geodetic Administration) hosts an online portal that the public can use to view topographic maps, aerial photographs, and other geospatial datasets. The Greek Γεωγραφική Υπηρεσία Στρατού (Hellenic Military Geographical Service) offers a similar service through their GeoPortal, where users can locate and order different kinds of geospatial datasets.
In terms of historical datasets, both regions were recorded by Ottoman and Venetian administrative officials at different points in the past few centuries. Counts of the local populations and information about place names and agricultural output were written down in documents that are now preserved in archives like the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (State Archives of Venice) and the Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü (Prime Minister’s General Directorate of State Archives) in Istanbul. Maps of the Habsburg Empire, which controlled Dalmatia for part of the 19th and 20th centuries, are freely available online through Mapire.
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