Panel 5.19 – Roman transport systems I: "New insights on the Roman Transportation Systems. New applications and methodologies for a better understanding of the transportation networks and the movement of commodities"


Organiser/Chair:

  • Pau De Soto (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

External Discussant:

  • Koenraad Verboven (Ghent University)

Panel abstract

The analysis of Roman infrastructures in order to understand the transport systems and the territorial organisation is an indispensable way to know the benefits and shortcomings of the transportation system created in Roman times. It is well known that the Roman Empire built the first big transport network. This overwhelming task included the construction of an enormous road system, and the building of river ports and maritime harbours, all connected and dynamically articulated. Such a huge effort aimed to create an integrated economy covering all the Roman provinces. In the last years, the growth of new digital tools have allowed the scientific community to work and develop their research studies on Roman transportation and commerce from new points of view. The use of new methodologies and approaches to these analyses is offering brand new data that seems to be very useful to obtain better reconstructions of the Roman transport conditions. Between these new approaches we can find the modelling of travel costs and times or the analysis of the road networks morphologies in order to obtain new knowledge about the territorial configuration. The results of such applications provide us with new information to understand the distribution of commodities, product competition and the role of the ancient economies, such as Rome, in the configuration of the historical territories. The ability to see graphically and quantitatively those results which until now they could only be guessed, can open new perspectives and justifications to the speeches made about the Ancient world up to now. At the same time, it is possible to observe how the construction of a complex communication network meant an important element for the integration of new territories to the Roman provincial model. For a better understanding of the morphology of these infrastructures, Network Analyses and other approaches are applied to understand the configuration and performance of the Roman networks in these territories. In this research context, with this panel we want to offer a public space where researchers can share their experiences with the use of this new methodologies and approaches applied to Roman transport and create a positive debate about their optimal application and generation of results.

 

Paper abstracts

1. Philip Verhagen and Mark Groenhuijzen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

How central are local centres? Testing archaeological hypotheses of the Dutch part of the Roman limes through spatial analysis and network science
The integration of the Dutch Rhine-Meuse delta in the Roman Empire during the first centuries AD is thought to have led to an increased structuring of the settlement pattern and an increased level of interaction between the rural population and the military population that resided in the forts along the Rhine.It has been argued that the Dutch limes zone can be characterised by a dendritic settlement system, particularly for the (re)distribution of goods, wherein most interactions moved up and down this hierarchic system and fairly little ‘horizontal’ interaction took place.
Through the modelling of transport movements using least-cost path analysis, the reconstruction of transport networks and the application of network analysis, this study presents a test of this archaeological hypothesis of a hierarchic settlement structure. The proposed ‘intermediary’ sites in the dendritic system are analysed to see whether or not they actually ‘central’ for their subsidiary areas, and by extension we can see if there are possibly other settlements that may have functioned as intermediary sites, that we did not know about previously. On a more general level, this study hopes to show that by expressing our archaeological ideas into relatively simple testable hypotheses, we can use methods from spatial analysis and network science to further our archaeological understanding in a more quantifiable way.

"How Central are Local Centres? Testing Archaeological Hypotheses of the Dutch Part of the Roman Limes through Spatial Analysis and Network Science" (Fulltext)

 

2. Eivind Heldaas Seland (University of Bergen)

Water and communication between Damascus and the Euphrates in the Roman period
Syria was an important province of the Roman Empire, with fertile agricultural lands, major commercial hubs, and an extensive and scarcely populated frontier to the Syrian Desert and beyond that to the Arsacid and later the Sasanian Empires.
Soldiers, traders and travellers moved along and across this frontier, and outposts and settlements in the desert needed supplies.
Although the Syrian Desert receives too little rain for agriculture, it is not hyper-arid. Water can be found in wells and sources or gathered in cisterns, but the availability of water becomes more difficult the further east and south one moves from the 200 mm isohyet theoretically separating desert and cultivated land. In this paper I investigate the relationship between water-sources and known settlements, outpost, and routes of communication on the axis between Damascus and the Euphrates using GIS- and network analysis. The hypothesis is that availability of water can help identify routes between settlements and outposts at a higher resolution than existing itineraries and survey data.

 

3. Hector Orengo (University of Cambridge) / Alexandra Livarda (University of Nottingham)

Networking imports at a continental scale: methodological approaches and research prospects
The combination of spatial network analysis with cultural data-based least cost route modelling and the large-scale distribution of exotic products has resulted in a detailed analysis of the transport economy of Roman Britain (see Livarda & Orengo 2015 and Orengo & Livarda 2016). For the rest of the Roman world, however, the lack of large-scale repositories of archaeological data and the schematic knowledge of ancient routes poses significant challenges to the application of these techniques on a ‘global’ scale.
This paper will address this issue by discussing new analysis methods based on the combination of (1) large-scale probabilistic route modelling for the reconstruction of the ancient transport system, (2) Social Network Analysis, which has the potential to provide important insights about connectivity between trade location, and (3) Spatial Network Analysis, which can analyse transport costs in real space-time and solve complex logistic problems. The use of distributions of imported material of known origin such as exotic food plants, marble, coins and ceramic containers can help modelling ancient commercial routes, trade preferences, commercial contacts, the role of transport in market integration, and can impact more general discussions such as the role of commerce and connectivity on Ancient urban development.

 

4. Cristina Corsi (University of Cassino and Southern Latium) / Frank Vermeulen

Nodes. New perspectives on road- and river-stations and communication networks in Roman Italy
After more than a decade of stasis, following the publication of important works that dwelled in different ways on the organisation of the Roman transportation system (e.g. Di Paola 1999, Corsi 2000, Kolb 2000), a new season of research has focused on the matter of Roman road-stations. However, in spite of the huge amount of archaeological data that has been collected in the past fifteen years the scientific questionnaire has not been radically renewed. Most frustrating is the fact that the interpretation process has not been able to overcome the impasse caused by the inescapable link to the cursus publicus. Here, we will try to disclose new perspectives on the nodes, the hubs where land- and waterways overlapped, reviewing some of the most interesting case studies in Roman Italy. The new evidence will be confronted with original theoretical frameworks, which challenge the traditional vision of the uneven relationship between overland and sea transport, in order to revitalise a research agenda that bares crucial importance for the study of the Roman economy and connectivity.

Litt.:
Corsi C. 2000, Le strutture di servizio del cursus publicus in Italia, Oxford.
Di Paola L. 1999, Viaggi, trasporti e istituzioni. Studi sul cursus publicus, Messina.
Kolb A. 2000, Transport und Nachrichtentransfer im Römischen Reich, Berlin.

"Nodes. New Perspectives on Road- and River-Stations and Communication Networks in Roman Italy" (Fulltext)

 

5. Pau De Soto (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Mercator-e. Quantifying the Roman transportation system in the Iberian Peninsula
The analysis of Roman infrastructures to understand the transport costs and the commercial routes and processes is an indispensable way to know the benefits and shortcomings of the transportation system created in Roman times. Such a huge effort aimed to create an integrated economy covering all the Roman provinces on the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.
Within the Mercator-e Project, we are attempting to reconstruct the Roman transport conditions by modelling travel costs and times with the help of GIS and Network Analysis applications. The main geographical focus of this project is the Iberian Peninsula. The results of such applications provide us with new information to understand the distribution of commodities, product competition and problems of stagnation in ancient economies such as that of Ancient Rome.
At the same time, it has been possible to observe how the construction of a complex communication network, meant an important element for the integration of new territories to the Roman provincial model. To understand the morphology of these networks, we apply some Social Network Analyses to understand the configuration and performance of the Roman mobility in these territories.
The same methodology can be used to analyse other historical periods and therefore to elaborate comparisons of the same territories along the centuries. It allows us to explore the transport network evolution of the Iberian Peninsula from Roman times to the XIXth Century.