Abstract
A key to understand historical geographies are historical road networks. GIS (Geographical Information Systems) can provide the tools to model roads of which the exact course is unknown due to lack of archaeological remains. Wayfinding algorithms, like least cost paths, can calculate routes over a landscape, based on assigned cost factors. But which factors are important for the routing of historical roads, besides the relief and rivers? Not just physical factors play an important role, but social, cultural, political and military factors as well. To model historical roads, these factors have to be identified and formalized. Formalization leads to a theoretical model, which can then be implemented in a GIS. Social geographic approaches, like systems theory, will act as framework for the formalization. Furthermore, two case studies will be presented. The first one is a medieval Byzantine road in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, which is mentioned in documents from the 13th and 14th Century. The second case study deals with a historical Buddhist pilgrimage route from the 11th Century in the Western Himalayas. Understanding of historical geography is necessary to create models of historical roads, but once created, they can help to further understand spatial relations in the historical landscape.
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Notes
- 1.
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/byzanz/tibpr.htm, accessed 18.04.2011.
- 2.
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/byzanz/routes, accessed 10.05.2011.
- 3.
http://geoengine.nga.mil/muse-cgi-bin/rast_roam.cgi, accessed 30.05.2012.
- 4.
http://www.univie.ac.at/chwh/, accessed 28.09.2011.
- 5.
http://www.univie.ac.at/chis/, accessed 28.09.2011.
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Acknowledgments
This research is undertaken within the doctoral college ‘Cultural Transfers and Cross-Contacts in the Himalayan Borderlands’, which started in 2011 at the University of Vienna. This doctoral college is related to an interdisciplinary project called ‘The Cultural History of the Western Himalaya from the 8th Century’ that started in 2007 in Vienna. This National Research Network (NRN), funded by the Austrian Science Fund, includes cartographers, art historians, numismatists, Buddhist philosophers, and Tibetan and Sanskrit philologists.
The research on the Byzantine road is undertaken within the project ‘Economy and Regional Trade Routes in Northern Macedonia (12th–16th Century)’ of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Institute for Byzantine Studies with close support by Dr. Mihailo Popović.
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Breier, M. (2013). Getting Around in the Past: Historical Road Modelling. In: Kriz, K., Cartwright, W., Kinberger, M. (eds) Understanding Different Geographies. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29770-0_16
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