Adam Pažout

The dataset represents the reconstructed Medieval (Early-Middle Islamic, ca. 650-1517 CE) road network with associated sites (settlements, road stations, forts, bridges, etc.) in the historical region of Levant/Bilād al-Šām. The data were compiled from selected Medieval Arabic geographic sources and published historical and archaeological evidence and previous attempts to reconstruct the Medieval road network in various periods and regions of the Levant. The roads and sites were identified and geolocated using modern and historical satellite imagery and georeferenced topographical maps. By integrating and digitising dispersed historical and archaeological data in a geospatial database the dataset will facilitate further research on the terrestrial transport networks in the Medieval Islamic world and will allow for a large-scale quantitative geospatial and network analyses.

Ancient infrastructure can leave lasting imprints on modern settlement patterns and mobility. The Roman road network connected vast regions of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and is often mentioned as an example of such long-term impact. Yet its structural characteristics remain largely unquantified. Here we present a high spatial resolution quantitative exploratory analysis of the Roman Empire’s road system, enabled by our creation of a spatially detailed Empire-wide dataset. We address long-standing questions concerning the straightness and persistence of these roads, and the centrality of cities like Rome. We show that Roman roads tend to be straight where topography allows but less so than modern roads; provincial capitals were more centrally located than other cities for mediating terrestrial mobility; segments hypothesised to be main roads were more important intermediaries than secondary roads; and Roman road density correlates with major modern roads.

The article presents a new methodological approach to understanding (post-dicting) the location of ancient roads based on an inductive topographic analysis of existing road remains. The research is focused on the analysis of a spatially highly precise dataset of Roman roads in the Near East, using selected topographic variables (maximum slope, topographic position index, vector ruggedness measure). The identified limits of the topographic variables are used to create an isotropic (direction-independent) model of ‘natural corridors of movement’ using an adapted ‘from everywhere to everywhere’ (FETE) method. The modelled movement corridors are then overlaid by the known Roman road network in the Near East, and their overlap is calculated. The overlap between the modelled corridors and Roman roads is around ~ 25%, suggesting that the selected topographic variables and slope categories have limited explanatory power in understanding the layout of the Roman road network as a whole. The performance of the isotropic model is compared to four selected slope-based anisotropic functions (Tobler, Naismith, Herzog, Llobera-Sluckin). It is shown that the isotropic model incorporating a limited number of topographic variables better explains the location of Roman roads than the selected functions. It is argued that these results suggest that additional anthropic, cultural variables have a stronger influence on the layout of the Roman road network, and an alternative approach on how to incorporate topographic and anthropic variables is proposed.

The Roman Empire’s road system was critical for structuring the movement of people, goods and ideas, and sustaining imperial control. Yet, it remains incompletely mapped and poorly integrated across sources despite centuries of research. We present Itiner-e, the most detailed and comprehensive open digital dataset of roads in the entire Roman Empire. It was created by identifying roads from archaeological and historical sources, locating them using modern and historical topographic maps and remote sensing, and digitising them with road segment-level metadata and certainty categories. The dataset nearly doubles the known length of Roman roads through increased coverage and spatial precision, and reveals that the location of only 2.737% are known with certainty. This resource is transformative for understanding how mobility shaped connectivity, administration, and even disease transmission in the ancient world, and for studies of the millennia-long development of terrestrial mobility in the region.

Agent-based modelling (ABM) is one of the most widely applied computational modelling research techniques in archaeology, because it is well suited to the questions asked by archaeologists. However, the access to vocational training for ABM is limited. In this paper we present the Open Educational Resources (OER) that we produced in an international cooperation. For this purpose, we created online and open tutorials for ABM for archaeologists. In addition, how-to guides and support material were created, both for teachers and students. The materials adhere to international (European) standards in relation to education and the Digital Skills Passport for archaeology. The teaching materials have been well tested using a diverse group of archaeologists during various international conferences and meetings. It was shown that the knowledge and skills of the participants in relation to ABM improved. In addition, the demand for the teaching materials and the workshops was high, ensuring that the tutorials on ABM will be used in the future.

Roman Imperial Roads (highways) built, maintained and organized by the Roman army and provincial authorities were studied in the Golan Heights since Schumacher’s surveys in the 1880s. However, most of these were obliterated by building and agricultural activity since the beginning of the 20^th century. Local ancient road system, linking individual communities and their agricultural land was never studied, since it barely leaves a trace in archaeological record. This paper presents reconstruction of inter-provincial highways passing through the southern Golan Heights, and local road system in GIS using cumulative focal mobility network (CFMN) analysis. The CFMN provides outline of natural corridors of movement in the region. From CFMN it is possible to extract path with higher mobility potential which will be tested against present evidence for Roman Imperial Highways, since it is assumed that corridors with high mobility potential would be suitable place for construction of (inter-)provincial road. Path with lower mobility potential might indicate local road system, so it would be possible to connect agricultural communities with the land they exploited; which in turn may have implications for site prediction and site-catchment analysis exploring quotidian movement of people and goods in the landscape. Two case studies in this respect are presented: the city of Hippos and settlement of es-Safuriyye.