Geographic information systems in archaeological analysis: a predictive model in the detection of rural Roman villae

This paper describes the experimental model that formed the basis for the author's PhD thesis. The main goal of the work is the implementation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in archaeological research. A survey of the state of the art was undertaken to enable an assessment of the model to be tried out and how implementation should be undertaken. The problem encountered then, and which still persists, is that data that are sufficiently reliable for archaeological purposes are hard to come by, in digital format.