Ricostruire le vie dell'Impero romano in oriente: l'analisi Least Cost Path tra GIS e Archeologia

The research aims to develop a predictive model to identify Roman road infrastructure in the first two centuries of Roman occupation in the Southern Levant by analyzing the cultural- historical context of Roman settlements and archaeological findings in the area between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. A multi- disciplinary approach has been adopted to integrate the spatial analysis processes of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in archaeological research, in order to develop and implement a Least Cost Path analysis approach that is able to reconstruct the ancient routes connecting the main cities of the empire and to assume the cost of crossing the entire study area. This analysis identifies the most efficient path between a site of origin and one of destination, that is, the one that accumulates the lowest cost of crossing over an area by identifying the factors that influence the crossing, such as topography, the slope and other natural and socio-cultural charac- teristics. Specifically, the research has tested three different Cost Surface models based on three different measures of cost: the first takes into account the slope derived from the DTM (Digital Terrain Model) and the presence of milestones, the second is based on a weighted average between the normalized values of the slope and the Euclidean distance from the milestones, while the third adds the latter two parameters to the normalized values of the Euclidean distances from the major and minor sites. To compare the results of each model, a proximity analysis was performed between the results of the three Least Cost Path analyses and the Roman roads network.