Routes across the Civitas Menapiorum: using least cost paths and GIS to locate the Roman roads of Sandy Flanders

Abstract

Despite a long research history, little is known about the Roman road network in the northern part of the Civitas Menapiorum. In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century publications researchers established the idea that Roman roads ended at the transition between the loamy and sandy areas. Others indicated that such roads were not yet located. During the last twenty years researchers have presumed the existence of five supralocal Roman roads in Sandy Flanders. However, their exact routes remained unclear. In this study a landscape archaeological approach is applied to study these roads and to suggest a series of possible routes. Based on recent LiDAR data and soil maps, least cost path analyses are performed in ArcGIS. Recent archaeological findings and double linear marks, visible on both oblique and vertical aerial photographs, are used to test the accuracy of the least cost paths. Finally, the names of present-day streets are used to clarify the continuity of Roman roads in the landscape.