Minding the gap: The via Amerina and the Middle Tiber Valley

The landscape of the Middle Tiber Valley in Central Italy was an important crossroads for millennia thanks to the network of transhumance routes, Roman roads, and of course, the Tiber River. Despite this fact, our understanding of the exact routes and relationship with the surrounding landscape is limited. This paper seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge by reconstructing the ancient road network of the via Amerina through a combination of archaeological data with Least Cost Path analysis. Furthermore, this paper illustrates the efficacy of context-sensitive applications of GIS tools to reconstruct ancient transportation networks. Ultimately, this study concludes that experimentation with least cost path analysis in well-studied environments offers considerable insight into the routes and local impact of Roman roads on Central Italian communities.