The application of network analysis to ancient transport geography: A case study of Roman Baetica

• Main Author: Leif Isaksen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2008-03-01
• Series: Digital Medievalist
• Subjects: Network Analysis; Transport Geography; Topography; Roman Baetica
• Online Access: https://journal.digitalmedievalist.org/articles/20

In many ways the Roman province of Baetica is an ideal subject for exploring new approaches to historic transport geography. This is not due to the completeness of its record (for it is not), but because it provides a remarkable breadth of pertinent data. This paper, loosely based on a seminar hosted by the Digital Classicist at King’s College London, will briefly discuss the results of applying some as-yet relatively uncommon techniques to the archaeology and documentary record of transport in the area. It will then go on to tackle some more general issues in creating maps of movement in the past, concluding that there is still much theoretical work to be done, but that the potential for discovering new patterns in old data is great, and indeed, ever growing. The main concept that will be explored is that of a Node Network, an abstract model of the interactions between spatially separate locations. This paper demonstrates the potential of a standard relational database, coupled with a GIS and Network Analysis software package, to make a spatial argument about the relative importance of key towns within a transport network and expose the constituent elements of that argument in a formal, visual manner.