The Roman road system allows us to analyze how regional processes in economics, political organization, and cultural change play out along a network. I used the data available for Britain to try and understand how the roads and towns correspond with our understanding of the Roman economy, with implications for communication and market processes within the province. My analysis is based in spatial economics (Fujita et al. 1996) and network theory, and the data provided here have been adapted for use in a network context. These methods, as well as adaptation of the data, can be expanded to cover more of the Roman empire, as the full map can now be downloaded from the Ancient World Mapping Center (UNC-CH). Work was accomplished with the advice and collaboration of Peter Mucha and the Networks research group.
Roman Britain
Data has been collected from a variety of sources. The roads of Britain are from the Ancient World Mapping Center, while town information comes from the volumes on the Towns and Small Towns of Roman Britain. Paleoclimatic reconstructions come from Dark's 2000 book. The data is accessible here in .csv format (see zip folder below). A user guide accompanies inside. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about the data, its origin or its organization.
Further Reading
Cabaniss A. 2014 Network Economics in Roman Britain. Available here.
Fujita et al. 1996 The spatial economy: cities, regions and international trade. MIT Press.
Newman, M. 2010 Networks: an introduction. Oxford University Press, Inc.
Burnham and Wacher 1990 The small towns of Roman Britain. UC Press.
Wacher 1997 Towns of Roman Britain. Routeledge.
Dark, P. 2000. The environment of Britain in the first millennium AD. Duckworth.