Network of Roman Roads Mapped

BARCELONA, SPAIN—ZME Science reports that a team of researchers led by Pau de Soto of the Autonomous University of Barcelona has created a high-resolution digital map of the entire known network of Roman roads called Itiner-e. These routes, as they were circa A.D. 150, cover some 186,000 miles. The study will help archaeologists calculate more accurate travel times across the Roman world, which would have had an effect on trade and warfare. De Soto and his colleagues began by extracting data from historic copies of Roman maps and the more than 8,000 known miliaria, or Roman milestones. Then they examined more recent historic maps, aerial photographs, and modern satellite imagery for glimpses of the ancient roads. Where physical evidence of roads had not survived, the researchers connected known milestones or any other archaeological evidence linked to roads by following the most plausible path along the topography. In all, less than three percent of the Roman roads in the study are well known and have been thoroughly mapped. Almost 90 percent of them fall into the category of “conjectured networks,” based upon the location of settlements, milestones, and other archaeological evidence. The final category consists of “hypothetical roads” presumed to have linked ancient cities, but no physical evidence for them has been found to date. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Data. To read about the discovery of a submerged section of a Roman road in the Venetian lagoon, go to "A Trip to Venice."