
Reconstructing the Roman Transport Network: New Methods and Approaches to Modelling Mobility from the R3UrbN Project
26th February 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM GMT
R3UrbN is an MSCA funded project aimed at modelling the transport network of the Roman Empire. The project employs innovative modelling methodologies to understand mobility and connectivity across the Roman world, with a particular focus on urbanisation and the reconstructing the complex transport network that connected the urban centres of the Empire. The model centres around a temporal cost surface and cost corridors to construct a network across the entire Roman world. The methodology is widely applicable to periods and regions beyond the immediate focus of this project, and it is hoped that a robust and up to date tool for modelling specific journeys across the Roman Empire will be produced at the project’s conclusion.
In this discussion, Andrew McLean places the project in the wider context of the archaeology of the Roman Empire, and how computational approaches are being applied in the field. He then outlines what has been achieved during the first year of the project, with some smaller scale case study examples. The focus is on the methodologies applied, particularly the innovative approach to cost surface and cost corridor generation and some of the initial results of testing the model.
Speaker Biography

Andrew McLean is an archaeologist with experience excavating in Italy, Turkey and most recently directing a new project in Croatia. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2022. His thesis centred on modelling the economy of the Roman Adriatic region, with a particular focus on mobility, both terrestrial and maritime. From 2021-2023 he worked as a Training Fellow at the CDCS, primarily offering training in R, basic statistics and GIS. Since December 2023 he has been a Marie Curie fellow on the R3UrbN project in Spain, initially at the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC) and now at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. His primary research interests are the economy of the Roman Empire and computational approaches to mobility in archaeology more broadly.