Itiner-e: the Google Maps of Roman Roads
itiner-e.org
itiner-e.org
- Pintia is almost confirmed to be near the Duero/Douro river, much more to the south and to the east. It is one of the most explored pre-Roman settlements in the area and while there has not been a definitive proof, there are many hints that show that it's on the place I showed and not where it's shown on the map
- Amallobriga is also, for most historians, located in Tiedra, but it shows Tordesillas. As you can see on the map, the actual location of Tiedra is also a road intersection. The location in Tiedra is consistent with archeological evidence and with route books that show the distance from Amallobriga to other cities we know.
- Nobody really knows where Intercatia or Tela are. But note that a there's a big road intersection at the south. It is confirmed that there was a settlement but we do not know the name of it, several have been proposed. In any case, Intercatia is very difficult to be located as it is shown in the map with no roads going to it. Many archaeologists say it could be in the actual town of Paredes de Nava.
- I don't think there's any real evidence of a bridge that crosses the Douro/Duero river there. What we know is that there's a medieval bridge closer to Septimanca and that it could have had a Roman origin, but according to the map there's no road there.
Unfortunately, Brughmans, de Soto, and Pažout neglected to include the legally required attribution for this use of OpenStreetMap data (via Mapbox). This is a shame, because these kind of projects are great to show people that there is more than just Google Maps.
West of Jajce in Bosnia there's a ring of roads that hasn't changed for 2000 years.
I wonder if there's a missing roman settlement under Sarajevo, considering the roads there match so well and the size of the city.
There would have been a long march across a sinky, sucky, midgie-infested bog to the south, then a long climb up a hill that's just steep enough to be annoying, and then when you get to the ridge overlooking what's now the Kelvin Valley - where Bar Hill fort is - there's just another even bigger wetter bog with lochs to wade through, hoaching with midgies, and an even bigger set of very steep hills beyond.
Inhabited by angry armed locals.
You know what, lads, if Antonius wants the land to the north of it then Antonius can come and claim it for himself, okay? Who's with me? Build the camp here? Build the camp here, then.
And now, if you brought a Roman soldier 1900 years forwards, I wonder what they'd make of it? Nothing left of the empire, except a few weirdly straight roads a little north of Glasgow, some half-buried ruins that the local high school kids get taken to on field trips during the day and go up to and smoke weed at night, and a few of those local kids have bigger noses than you might otherwise expect.
If you look at that landscape with a Roman officer’s brain (lead addled as it might be), it makes a lot of sense. The Antonine Wall sits on the narrowest useful neck of Britain, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde, so you get a frontier from sea to sea with the minimum amount of digging and building. Bar Hill in particular is one of the highest points on that line; you schlep through bog and up an annoying slope precisely so your fort sits on a ridge with a commanding field of view over the Kelvin valley and the approach routes beyond.
The Romans aren’t thinking “this is the end of the world forever, we’re too lazy to go farther.” They’re thinking in terms of administratively useful lines. A frontier, in Roman terms, isn’t where patrols stop but where taxation and permanent stone architecture stop. They had marching camps and temporary posts further north and they pushed beyond this line in the Flavian period, and they continued to raid and campaign beyond it even with the Antonine Wall in place. But they wanted one clear, surveyable, defensible line they can tie into fleets on both coasts and run roads along. Hence the miserable hilltop with a great view.
It’s also politics. Hadrian had his nice sensible stone wall farther south. Antoninus Pius needed a military accomplishment to put on the resume, so he pushes the formal frontier forward and a new line, new forts, new distance slabs proudly recording how many Roman feet of wall each unit built. From that perspective, the legionary is not merely damp and covered in midges but also being used as a bullet point in the emperor’s performance review.
And yes, let me overstate it - Google is not part of anything related to this research, and for their valuable contribution, overall and in particular, they are very kindly not mentioned in the paper.
But guys here don't care about peculiar details, no?
Interestingly, the interesting (pun intended) topic did not rise the very obvious question - is the data open. Well, idk, but is at least downloadable.
For my part, the Romans never went more than halfway up the Netherlands, meaning the north ("above the rivers") is culturally somewhat different from the south, although the cultures did converge over time. But "below" the rivers is still generally Catholic wheras "above" is Protestant. For example.
A bit of work on the UI would make this a really fun and interesting tool - currently it seems to be intended for people who know a lot about the dataset already.
It would be nice to be able to use Streetview or similar to see how the roads look today (where they still exist).
These Romans are crazy!
You can click on a road segment and get some info about it so the first step would be to add a way to contact its author to suggest improvements.
For example I know of some hidden ruins of a very ancient bridge where my local roman road crossed the river with two paths that show where the road on both sides would have been instead of where the road cross the river on the segment.
(SCNR)
I'm really surprised how built-up Gaul and Germany are here
And as I suspected, this was seen on Metafilter 11/6, the day before:
https://www.metafilter.com/210946/Interactive-Map-of-Every-K...
Two macroscopic problems are:
1. The only variant given is between Bolsena and Fabro. There is nothing about later routes to the west of Valdichiana and to the left of the Arno.
2. The section between Arezzo and Cascia used the exact route of the modern Setteponti, which was certainly not the case.
Beyond these errors, every section I have checked in detail for the Cassia contains inexact info.
Also it is high time for everyone to understand that not every map out there is goog's and more importantly - there are at least 5 providers of mappings software that do it either better or likewise well, and these guys' work needs to be respected. In fact it is very likely that gmaps would rate very low if one is to rank it considering usability (APIs including), licensing, speed and quality of the render.
the Google Maps is being used to frame or position the sites intent of a data rich maps site of Roman Roads
"Itiner-e – The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads"
And Goog does none of this to deserve any credit.
Itiner-e: the digital atlas of ancient roads © 2024 by Brughmans, Pažout, de Soto and Bjerregaard Vahlstrup is licensed under CC BY 4.0