| Summary: | Navigation without a chart or instruments depended on a pilot’s knowledge and ability to use the wind, the stars and the reading of the landscape to safely steer a ship to its destination. There has been a growing interest in navigation aids over the last ten years. Ongoing studies, only a few results of which have been published to date, reveal that these navigation aids are extremely numerous in the Mediterranean area, but also that the archaeological traces they have left are often very subtle. Reconstructing the visual landscape of ancient navigators means abandoning the vision we have of it from the land and entering into the cognitive process of landscape design by the pilots. The methods of intellectual construction and the functions of daymarks vary according to the routes and the practices, the ships and the users. Navigation in a straight line, with a succession of days and nights at sea, was a common process within an area bounded to the north by Jutland and the British Isles, including Ireland, by Madeira to the west and by the Canary Islands to the south. Lighthouses, with a reach of 20 to 30 nautical miles, were built within these geographical limits. Their visibility depends on the height of the focal point. The height of the construction is practically only justified on a low shoreline, to compensate for the lack of altitude of the substratum. In A Coruña (Spain), a 40-metre-high tower made it possible to gain only 2.5 nautical miles of visibility compared to a 20-metre-high tower. The construction of higher and more complex monuments has to take other factors into account. Their “remarkable construction” reflects the importance of the sponsor. Generally speaking, the most monumental lighthouses are the best known. They have been observed for a longer time, are sometimes still preserved, and have been described in texts as being endless repetitions of the lighthouse of Alexandria (Egypt). They can give rise to a biased view of reality. The example of the Mediterranean highlights the extreme ...
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