HERs, journals & other resources

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Mapping data across Britain

Across the Roman Empire

An interpretation on to a modern map of the Peutinger Table, also using the Antonine Itenraries in the Western part (Britain, Spain, Portugal, N.Africa), which does not survive.

A gazatteer of the Roman roads of Portugal.

A gazatteer of the Roman roads of Castille, an excellent piece of work offering downloadable data. It can be slow to load at first, due to the large file sizes.

A brief but interesting study by Martin Hulsemann of the possible campaign roads and true Roman roads

ORBIS, developed in 2012 by Walter Scheidel and Elijah Meeks for the University of Stanford, is an attempt to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. The website allows the creation of routes along a few selected major roads across the empire, according to the setting of various variables such as fastest/cheapest/shortest, month of travel etc.. The distance, time taken, and cost in denarii is then calculated.

Whilst not directly Roman , this site does have enormous potential for understanding the use of inland waterways in the Roman period. Inland Navigation in England and Wales before 1348: GIS Database maps the rivers and canals of medieval England and Wales that are known to have been navigated by various forms of water transport, bringing together evidence from documentary sources, the archaeological record and place-name information. It provides a digital resource for investigating the extent and character of medieval inland navigation on a national scale.

Whilst not directly Roman, this project, part of the Leverhulme funded ‘Travel and Communications in Anglo-Saxon England’ examines all known fords and bridge sites from archaeological and documentary evidence, prior to 1250. Since it is thought that many, if not most early medieval roads had Roman origins, this project may help us better understand the true relationships between the Roman and early medieval networks.

Developed by Johan Ahlefeldt at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, this resource is an attempt to map the entire Roman world as part of Pelagios, with every site and every road. Its starting point is the Barrington Atlas from 2000, and as such some of the mapping is a little out of date, although improvements are being made. British roads are derived from Margary.

The main research objective of this project is evaluate the changes in the transportation historical networks evaluating their connectivity and the costs and times of travel from the Roman period to the 19th century. The project is on-going, and collates work by many different researchers in its mapping of the immense Roman network in the peninsula. An interactive map of Roman roads is available here.