Towards an Alternative Solution for the Detection of Historic Structures in Antwerpen (Belgium)

This paper aims to present the try-out of a method which allows to go back to about the end of the fourteenth century (in this particular case even to about 1150), tracing both continuity and changes of plots and construction phases in an old city centre, using limited survey techniques, and combining various archival data with any available archaeological information. This method is based on the systematical archival analysis of building-blocks by making an inventory of the whole, investigating layers of history going backward in time, so as to detect with absolute certainty the connections between the individual sites, and to reveal possible systems of building construction and typologies.