Karen A. Borstad, PhD
The scientific study of Roman roads is an often-neglected archaeological specialty. The remains of constructed Roman roads, even though they are true archaeological sites, rarely receive analyses of their chronology, topographical setting or historical significance. The focus of my career research is to explore Roman constructed roads within the topography of natural travel landscapes in Jordan. To do this, field surveys are purpose driven, looking for built road sites as well as ethnographic landscape patterns that affect the movement and settlement of population groups.
In the modern landscape the sites of ancient constructed roads generally appear as isolated fragments that no longer can be seen as a continuous road. In this condition road sites give no indication of their original ʼfromʼ and ʻtoʼ points, i.e., the towns, forts and other places of human activity that they once connected. Therefore, the study of these sites is highly dependent on mapping; through maps the extent of a road's route is seen from the elevated ʻbird’s eyeʼ perspective of a map's landscape that is impossible to see from the ground.
The Roman road mapping that I do is through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. The data input to the GIS are road site coordinate points gathered in the field with GPS devices; these field data may be combined with GIS strategies such as the georeferencing of historical maps from the earliest scientific surveys in Jordan.
The purpose of Roman road study is to build a comprehensive interpretive framework for exploring a site's historical context. This is particularly helpful in learning more of the "Hellenistic" history in Jordan, a time when the Nabataeans were in control of the region until ca. AD 106 when Rome annexed their kingdom and formed it as the province Arabia. Historical questions arise, such as: what factors may have influenced the location of the Roman road networks within the Nabataean socio-economic and political milieu during its transition to Roman provincial status?
