A GIS-based method for researching the historical and architectural heritage of the mountainscapes: The case of Uludağ / Olympus Monasteries

Year 2022, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 73 - 85, 29.12.2022

Figen Kıvılcım Çorakbaş , Emre Mustafa Bektöre

Abstract

Uludağ / Mount Olympus is a mountainscape where natural and cultural values coexist. One of the under-researched cultural layers of Uludağ is the remains of the Byzantine Period monasteries, which are considered to compose one of the unique cultural landscapes of the Byzantine world. The site surveys realized by the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality Research Team proved that some remains still exist in the current Uludağ mountainscape. This study aims to understand the monasteries’ cultural landscape by integrating qualitative, quantitative, historical, and current data on the Uludağ monasteries in a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) model. Various analysis tools that GIS provides are utilized in order to estimate the approximate locations of the monasteries’ remains. In addition, the relationships of the monasteries with topography, city, and landscape are discussed through relevant GIS maps. As a result, it is observed that the Uludağ monasteries were located in hard-to-access locations and were well-integrated into nature. The cultural heritage of monasteries requires a multidisciplinary approach that can be managed by the utilization of GIS.

Keywords

Cultural Landscape, Cultural Heritage, Architectural Conservation, Geographical Information Systems, GIS, Uludağ / Olympus, Byzantine Monasteries

Thanks

We thank the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality for sharing their archive. We are grateful to Zeynep Çoban, Zuhal Kara, and Feyza Çelik for contributing to GIS database preparation. We thank very much to İmran Satış Atar, Muhammed Gazihan Çelik, and İlayda Maşat for their help in proofreading and formatting.

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