[HN Gopher] Itiner-e: A high-resolution dataset of roads of the ...
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Itiner-e: A high-resolution dataset of roads of the Roman Empire
Author : benbreen
Score : 45 points
Date : 2025-11-11 19:01 UTC (8 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| aarroyoc wrote:
| Previously discussed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45864341
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I've always thought that it was interesting the Romans built the
| Antonine Wall where it is, and declared that to be the end of the
| empire in Britannia.
|
| 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.
| throwup238 wrote:
| That's exactly why they built a fort there. It was miserable to
| get to and an easy place to spot the angry locals coming.
|
| 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.
| mzs wrote:
| online viewer: https://itiner-e.org/
| Barry-Perkins wrote:
| Itiner-e provides an impressive, high-resolution mapping of Roman
| roads, offering invaluable insights for historians,
| archaeologists, and GIS researchers studying connectivity, trade,
| and mobility in the Roman Empire. A great resource for both
| academic research and digital humanities projects.
| Scott-David wrote:
| Impressive dataset--very valuable for exploring Roman road
| networks."
|
| "A great tool for historians and archaeology enthusiasts alike."
|
| "High-resolution data like this opens up new possibilities for
| research on the Roman Empire.
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(page generated 2025-11-19 23:01 UTC)