Juxtaposing GIS and Archaeologically Mapped Ancient Road Routes

Mapping ancient roads is crucial to tell credible geospatial stories about where, how, or why different people might have travelled transported materials within and between places in the distant past. Achieving this process challenging commonly accomplished by means of archaeological GIS methods materials. It not uncommon for experts employing these generate inconsistent delineations same roads, creating confusion how produce knowledge decisions based on multiple perspectives. This yet be adequately addressed problem motivates our desire enrich existing literature nature extents differences. We juxtapose archaeologically generated road maps northern Etruria, a region Italy with well-developed network built Etruscans Romans. reveal map differences through comparison approach that integrates broad set qualitative quantitative measures plus concepts strategies. The are evident route locations, sinuosities, lengths, complexities terrains which routes were as defined subtle variations elevation, slope, ruggedness. They ranged from 11.2–34.4 km length, 0–65.7 m relief, 1.0–13.5% mean grade, 0.07–0.79 detour indices 0.19–3.08 terrain roughness indices, all can considerable depending application. Taken together, proved effective furthering understanding range possible disagreements linear features mapped extensible other application areas. point importance explicitly acknowledging maintaining usable perspectives databases well visualization analysis processes, regardless levels disagreement, especially where ground-truth informed assessments cannot reliably performed.