The place names of the Aragonese maps. Interpretative hypotheses, landscape readings and methodological proposals

Abstract

ABSTRACT Aragonese Maps’ is the name of the remaining sheets of the large-scale topographic map series attributed to the Aragonese administration of Southern Italy (1282–1516). These maps are one of the ‘mysteries’ of the history of Europe for the layered wealth of geographical information and the technical perfection of the drawing, cartography. They offer innumerable possibilities of territorial investigation and for this reason they are at the centre of the recent research of geographers, historians and scholars of the territory tout court. The visible and invisible landscapes they depict, of which the toponyms are privileged indicators, offer the opportunity for a geographical-historical investigation in a diachronic perspective: in fact, they contain numerous details linked to previous or subsequent contexts and as many questions about their origin and historical provenance. The contribution therefore proposes a geo-cartographic reading of the material and immaterial landscape elements of the Aragonese maps, starting from three objectives: the comment of some ‘enigmatic’ details of the depicted territory; the dynamic and functional reading of the landscapes obtained from an examination of the most explanatory toponyms; a methodological proposal for the realization of a Geotoponomastic Atlas based on the semantic web.