October 16, 2006
The archaeological evidence 3 - The roman roads
Posted by Kristian Minck under Material Culture, Roman roads, Roman wagons, Transportation generalWorking with roman wagons you have to make a note on the roads. A lot of scholars around the world have been working on this subject and therefore I will not spend that much energy on the roads themselves.
The roman roads are, no doubt, one of the greatest works of engineering in the ancient world, not alone for their stability and longtime durability but also for what they carried along ex. bridges, tunnels and caves in mountain-areas. The roads are also one of the main reasons why the romans could keep the control of an empire stretching from the River Rhine to the Sahara dessert and from the Atlantic Ocean to the River Euphrates, because they guarantied the infrastructure and thereby secured the possibility of moving large troops a long distance in a short amount of time. (Click here to find out more about the roman roads)
However, my interest in the roman roads concern the tracks of usage discovered in many original road-pavings around the Mediterranean. Here below are some examples of roman roads with marks of wagon-usage. These four roads, and the one shown in the blog-header, are all roman roads found in Italy, but there are also known roads from the roman provinces around the Mediterranean. The roads are, from the left; from Pompeii (the city area), Via Amerina (outside Falerii Novi), Rusellae (the forum area), Vulci (the road towards Ponte Rotto) and the header is from Ostia Antica (main road). All photos are my own.
October 23, 2006 at 19:35
Godt at se, at arbejdet skrider frem! Og at du får set noget af Italien!
November 22, 2006 at 15:03
Great website - very interesting. A friend and I were wondering if the signs of wagon usage on Roman roads really dates back to Roman times, or could they have been caused in later historical eras?
We weren’t sure if the Roman wagon wheels were iron-shod or not (your pictures seem to indicate that they were). Is it possible to estimate the percentage of wagons with iron-clad wheels? Does it depend on the period?
November 26, 2006 at 22:32
Glad you like the blog.
I think it is right to assume that roman roads indeed was used in later historical eras, but we do have places, such as Pompeii, where it is impossible to believe in later than roman usage, as reason for the visible wagon-tracks.
So far I do believe that most roman wagon-wheels were iron-clad, but if you think/know otherwise I will be glad to hear about it. I have no idea about a percentage on iron-clad wheels, but I think it is depending on the road material in the region where the wagon is build, meaning; it is difficult to drive a wagon with iron-clad wheels in an area with only soft dirt-roads. Therefore the wagons in southern Scandinavia, in the roman period, had wheels without the iron-ring; where the wagons in Etruria, even before the romans, wore iron-clad wheels.
May 21, 2007 at 0:17
you need more information about these roads