Revolutionizing Roman Roads: Mapping Ancient Infrastructure with Itiner-e

Sydney, Nov 7 (The Conversation) At its peak, the Roman Empire spanned 5 million square kilometers and housed about 60 million residents. A sophisticated network of long-distance roads connected regions, sometimes separated by hundreds or thousands of kilometers, holding this vast territory together.

Roman roads, by modern standards, were over-engineered marvels. Their construction often extended a meter or two underground, layered with materials, and surfaced with volcanic rock or limestone in Italy.

The roads featured milestones that displayed distances, aiding in estimating travel time and postal delivery schedules.

Thanks to enduring archaeological remains and historical documents, we can reconstruct an image of this ancient road network.

A new study led by Tom Brughmans from Aarhus University, Denmark, has produced a comprehensive digital map and dataset that charts almost 300,000 kilometers of Roman roads across nearly 4 million square kilometers.

The innovative dataset, known as Itiner-e, resulted from a combination of archaeological and historical records, topographic maps, and satellite imagery.

This new mapping reflects a significant 59% increase over previous mappings, which recorded 188,555 kilometers of roads, marking a substantial expansion of our understanding of ancient infrastructure.

Approximately one-third of the 14,769 identified road segments in the dataset are classified as major long-distance roads, such as the renowned Via Appia connecting Rome to southern Italy, whereas the rest are mostly unnamed secondary roads.

The researchers have provided transparency regarding the data's reliability; only 2.7% of the roads have accurately known positions, while 89.8% are less precise, and 7.4% are hypothesized routes based on the evidence available.

Itiner-e offers valuable improvements over past efforts, especially in the road coverage of the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, and North Africa. A notable methodological advancement includes routes adapted to geographical realities, allowing mountain roads to follow practical, winding paths instead of idealized straight lines.

While the dataset significantly enhances data on Roman roads, it does not encompass all known Roman roads. For instance, around Rome's hinterland, major and secondary roads are well-mapped, but smaller local networks still require inclusion.

Itiner-e excels at capturing the broader transportation framework, highlighting the need for localized maps offering greater detail using knowledge of specific cities' transport infrastructures.

Significant archaeological evidence remains to be translated into a digital platform and map for broader academic access.

Itiner-e also integrates aspects of Stanford University's Orbis tool, which calculates ancient travel times from point A to B. Travel by road was mostly calculated based on humans (4 km/h), ox carts (2 km/h), pack animals (4.5 km/h), and horse couriers (6 km/h), though mule-drawn carriages, a prevalent form of travel, still merit inclusion due to their strength and endurance advantages.

Itiner-e provides novel methods to delve into Roman transportation systems. By associating the map with known cities, researchers can better grasp the transport network supporting ancient citizens' lives.

New research opportunities arise, like estimating how many mules, donkeys, oxen, and horses would have been needed for communication or how many journeys were necessary to announce an emperor's death across the empire. Inscriptions documenting road renewals due to bridge collapses, for example, can now be studied for their network impacts using Itiner-e.

Many questions remain unanswered, offering fertile ground for future investigations.

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