A landscape interpretation through place names: the municipality of Gistaín (Huesca)
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Abstract
Toponymy is a fundamental source of information to understand the processes of anthropogenic landscape transformation. Place names are a particular form of intangible construction of space that combines environmental elements and cultural features of the territories. Furthermore, they are part of the identity, the connection with the environment and the collective memory of the societies that have occupied them over time.
Much of this cultural heritage is currently being lost as a result of the abandonment of the countryside, the aging of the population and the disappearance of economic activities considered traditional. Many place names are preserved only in oral memory, and among those that are documented, a large part can no longer be located with precision.
In this work the possibilities offered by place names through the analysis of their meaning and their precise georeferencing are explored in order to understand the different ways of occupying and exploiting the territory, to interpret the documentary sources and to study the genesis and evolution of the landscape from a diachronic perspective.