Roaman road near Ambrussum, southern Gaul
Scientific journal Nature has just published a high-resolution dataset of roads of the Roman Empire by an international group of academics that suggests a much more extensive Road network than we could have imagined.
The new map – an online database called Itiner-e – has been compiled from a number of different sources, including earlier databases, satellite images and archaeological reports.
It reveals the full extent of the road network as it was in the year AD 150 and includes main roads between settlements, military roads for Roman soldiers and local routes overlooked in earlier research and discovered more recently.
How will this new map help expand knowledge?
Scientists and historians will be able to better understand topics such as mobility, trade, the empire’s expansion, government systems and the spread of diseases, not to mention barbarian invasions in the late empire.
For authors, this is a marvellous resource. I was delighted to see almost all of Julia’s journey in JULIA PRIMA and the exiles’ trek in EXSILIUM that I’d worked out using the earlier Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire confirmed.
Roads leading to Virunum
As in many studies, the researchers are cautious. while some roads, especially the famous ones we’ve all heard of such as the Appia or Flaminia, many of the roads are ‘conjectured’ based on strong evidence. and about 7 percent of the more than 185,000 miles represents where roads are expected to have existed but where there isn’t good evidence of their precise locations.
In the Nature article, they mark up places where there is high confidence, medium confidence or low confidence in their findings. A very sensible approach, but it’s still all very exciting!
Itiner-e has made this video which I found rather charming…
I’m looking forward to the researchers taking this study even further forward until we have the whole network mapped with at least medium confidence!
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
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