Almost 300,000 km: By far the most extensive map of Roman roads online
The road network of ancient Rome has been studied for centuries, yet it is still inadequately mapped. This will soon change with the most extensive map to date.
Roman roads in and around modern Augsburg
(Image: Itiner-e)
An international research team has created by far the most extensive map of the road network in the Roman Empire, based on satellite images among other sources. The online map is called Itiner-e and has existed for some time. With the latest update, the length of the roads compiled within it has almost doubled to over 299,000 km, and the level of detail has been greatly improved. This was made possible by better coverage of previously less well-documented regions and a significantly higher resolution, allowing sections winding through mountains, for example, to be depicted much more accurately. The map thus serves as a starting point for compiling further information and as a digital resource for the public.
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Starting point for further research
The road network of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire was an important foundation for the functioning of the empire. Although it has been researched for hundreds of years, it is still inadequately mapped, explains the research group. This is also the reason its extent has been massively underestimated until now. For the Itiner-e project, researchers interdisciplinarily evaluated archaeological and historical evidence and combined it with modern data. In an animated video, they explain what the roads looked like in different parts of the Roman Empire and how great the differences were.
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The freely available dataset is a milestone for understanding Roman roads and how they structured the movement of people, goods, ideas, and even ancient pandemics, the group writes. The high level of detail now allows for new analyses of how well the different parts of the empire were connected, how expensive transport was, or how pronounced administrative control was. The map covers the entire Roman Empire at the time of its greatest extent around the year 150—from the western Mediterranean, through France, southern and western Germany, Great Britain and the Balkans, to North Africa and the Middle East. You can zoom in as far as you like and also overlay satellite images on the maps. The large team presented the work now in the journal Scientific Data.
(mho)
