Drawing and interpreting planimetric surveys: rural landscape and old productive architectures in Sierra de Cádiz

Abstract

In order to understand and assess rural land-scapes and their architectures, many of which are recognised as Cultural Landscapes, an anal-ysis of their current state is required. Carrying it out from historical cartographies helps to reveal essenƟ al and permanent forms of the territory.The small and old rural producƟ ve architectures, together with roads, canals, crops and other nat-ural elements, are part of the current territorial structure and are essenƟ al elements to draw the cartographic strata that overlap over Ɵ me.It is necessary to record these minor construc-Ɵ ons in historical maps to idenƟ fy, understand and interpret these types of territories and their architectures This approach is applied to the hy-draulic mills of the Sierra de Cádiz (Andalusia, Spain) located in the Planimetric surveys (1873-1874) preceding the fi rst NaƟ onal Topographic Map.The methodology used draws from a detailed reading of the Planimetric surveys; it uses the concept of deconstrucƟ on put forward by J. B. Harley, analyƟ cally fragmenƟ ng the elements-de-scriptors that consƟ tuted the structure of the mill; it is complemented with fi eldwork; and it develops into the elaboraƟ on of current plani-metries of the mill landscape through the super-posiƟ on of the descriptors. The usefulness of the Planimetric surveys is demonstrated by recognising how the territo-ry has been modelled in addiƟ on to discovering values and teachings in these rural architectures, which are currently silenced. Drawing their pres-ent and traces of the past makes it possible to in-tegrate these rural landscapes and their architec-tures into Geographic InformaƟ on Systems (GIS), which opens doors to new research.