Thesis title: Landscape archaeology to understand social complexity and collective memory in ancient mobile societies: Geographic Information System and Spatial Analysis for the assessment of anthropological landscape and human mobility in South-Eastern Arabia in the third millennium BCE
This research explores the socio-spatial dynamics of mobile societies in South-Eastern Arabia during the third millennium BC, focusing on the strategic distribution and significance of monumental architectures known as ‘Early Bronze Age Towers’ (EBAT). Through an integrated approach combining landscape archaeology and digital tools (GIS, 3D modelling, spatial and statistical analysis), the thesis investigates how these structures reflect practices of territorial appropriation, community cooperation and collective memory construction in the absence of centralised urban forms. The results demonstrate that the monumental landscapes of the central Hajar area (Sultanate of Oman) are an expression of complex socio-economic systems based on seasonal mobility and shared resource management. The study proposes a multiscale and reproducible analytical model, based on open-source software and FAIR protocols, which contributes to the debate on social complexity in non-urban contexts and on the epistemological potential of digital archaeology.