roman roads

Current Archaeology’s September Listings: exhibitions, events, and heritage from home

There are lots of great ways to get involved with history and archaeology over the next few months, including exhibitions, lectures, and conferences exploring a wide range of subjects. If you would prefer to get your heritage fix from the comfort of your sofa, though, there is a variety of resources on offer online, too, from virtual site tours and digital offerings by museums to podcasts, TV shows, and more. Kathryn Krakowka has put together a selection of some of the options available.

Roman Roads Research Association

By AD 150, the Roman road system extended for some 300,000km (more than 186,000 miles – 7.5 times the circumference of the earth). This comprehensive transport infrastructure underpinned the mobility and trade that characterised the Roman Empire. Later, it enabled…

Retreading old trails

A comprehensive road system underpinned the exceptional degree of mobility and trade that characterised the Roman Empire, and much of the modern road system in Europe and the Mediterranean region is built on top of Roman constructions. Roman roads are also among the earliest relics of antiquity to be studied and mapped.

Footpaths: A British history

REVIEW BY RP Most people see the British footpath for its immediate purpose: a means of getting from A to B (seldom achieved without also acquiring muddy shoes and the occasional nettle-sting). Not so for Tom King, who has spent…

Roman horse-changing station uncovered in Gloucestershire

Oxford Cotswold Archaeology (OCA) archaeologists working on the A417 Missing Link improvement scheme in Gloucestershire have uncovered a Roman mutatio (literally ‘change’; the Latin term for a horse-changing station) among 12,000 years of archaeological material being brought to light under…

Geophysical survey identifies two Roman villas near Wroxeter

The largest-ever geophysical survey undertaken by the National Trust has revealed two probable Roman villas among other archaeological features on the Attingham Estate in Shropshire. The work, carried out by Magnitude Surveys in July, covered an area of more than…

Modelling the Roman road network in the south-west

A recent modelling project has created a probable map of the Roman road network across the counties of Devon and Cornwall, showing how it may have connected with the wider province of Britannia. While the presence of a few Roman…

The Road: a story of Romans and ways to the past

REVIEW BY ANDREW TIBBS The Road is a personal journey by the author to experience Roman roads and how they impacted the lives of those around them, and the surrounding landscape, not just 2,000 years ago, but in more recent…

A Roman transport canal into Leicester?

After years of research, Steve Mitchell and John Poulter hypothesise that the Raw Dykes – a double-banked ditch located 2km south of Leicester’s Roman public baths – is a remnant of a navigable Roman canal. Their full results were recently…

50 Finds from Buckinghamshire: objects from the Portable Antiquities Scheme

In this latest book in the 50 Finds series, Arwen Wood, Finds Liaison Officer for Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes, presents Britain’s history through the objects found across the county and recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). Sadly lacking in…

Recent Roman discoveries during the A1 upgrade in North Yorkshire

In 2018, Highways England opened an upgraded section of motorway on the A1 in North Yorkshire. Construction of the new road prompted a series of large-scale excavations, with illuminating results. Stuart Ross and Cath Ross present some of the preliminary findings.