What is a ‘route’ anyway?

The term ‘route’ is used to indicate a number of related but distinct entities.

First it is used as a synonym of (1) itinerary (as in, ‘the route taken by Alexander through the mountains’) – which is a specific sequence of movements from place to place and can be represented textually (as in, ‘from Adana to Aleppo’, or as a sequence of GPS co-ordinates) or visually (as a line on a map). Itineraries can be repeated and re-followed of course and can be represented in very different levels of detail, but they are always specific.

Such itineraries tend to follow pre-existing (2) roads, paths or tracks, with which the word ‘route’ is also often equated (cf. la route as the French word for road). In the modern context, the distinction between road and path is normally between the mode of transport (by wheel or by foot respectively), but over the longue durée a potentially more important distinction is between essentially architectural intentionally-built structures (roads, streets, railways) and organically-emergent braided tracks. These are closely interrelated of course – one may form the basis of the other when a former track is transformed into a road – but the key point is that roads, paths and tracks are in specific locations.

Related to this sort of ‘route’ is the (3) mountain pass, a specific zone at a lower altitude to the surrounding mountains that hence allows people to pass from one side to the other more easily than elsewhere, for which the term route is sometimes synonymous.

This localized specificity contrasts with a vaguer but often more historically useful definition of a route as (4) a landscape corridor of movement. This refers to the fact that while the specific location and trajectory of a road or path may change, the broad direction of movement remains stable over the long-term within certain bounds: i.e. there will always be a road or track between neighbouring places, A and B, (a corridor) but that the specific location of the constituent road(s) or track(s) may change. ‘Sea-routes’ also illustrate this category of definition, since whilst it is possible to follow an itinerary of ports-of-call, it is rarely possible and indeed irrelevant to attempt to follow exact paths across the sea.

Of course it would be futile to entirely de-link the word ‘route’ from its various current meanings, but it is still worth differentiating them in the archaeological context because the identification of routes in the ancient world should not be, as sometimes assumed, the same as the search for ‘roads’ or ‘tracks’. Most ‘tracks’, which probably formed the bulk of those used throughout human-history, are archaeologically ephemeral and will never be identified. On the other hand, route ‘corridors’ should be identifiable archaeologically by searching for material markers: ‘traded’ goods and more general similarities between the archaeological remains of adjacent (and distant) sites.

3.2.1 Types of routes: pathways and highways²⁶

Approaching routes from another direction, we can also make a distinction between two types of routes: what I would call pathways and highways. Besides the obvious hierarchical implications between these two terms, we can identify qualitative differences that have consequences for their function in their original contexts and their reconstruction. Traditionally in both archaeological and historical research, the focus has been on highways. These types of routes are normally reconstructed from historical accounts like those mentioned in Section 2.4. They might

26 An earlier draft of this section formed the first part of an online ‘visual essay’ on ArchAtlas, prepared by this author, which also included explanatory diagrams (cf. T. C. Wilkinson 2009).

include: official itineraries; stories or records of military success or failure; pilgrim accounts; or fabulous stories. The common feature of such routes is the narrative-like structure of the journeys described. Accounts of highways are telegraphic, partial and linear. They involve a series of landmarks, or key characters – cities, fords, passes, bridges, or peoples – between origin and destination. They often involve significant journeying over long distances by individuals. Often, though not always, highways are the dominant or ‘official’ ways by which urban dwellers may pass from one major urban centre to another. Indeed highways are the means by which the elite travel, or send goods, to parallel elites in other centres. They may be reified physically through the construction of metalled roads, official posting stations, or protected by special guards. All these may come at a cost, as tolls and taxes must be paid to access the advantages of the highway. Highways also may cross cultural or political boundaries, as major interregional ‘trade routes’. In accounts of journeys along these routes, the differences encountered add to the dramatic effect of their significance. In this sense, highways are linear or bipolar:

having clear start and end poles, each of which potentially occupies very different social spaces.

In contrast, the second type of route, a pathway, is related to everyday movements between home, work and other settings for action. These rarely get inscribed permanently by being written down. They include the footpaths, animal or cart tracks between villages, houses, fields or, in the case of transhumant societies, between pastures and other bases. Unlike highways, pathways are radial rather than bipolar, in the sense that they involve repetitive travel back and forth between bases. Cumulative unresolved movements may result in gradual drift over the long term, of course, for example in situations where marriage patterns dictate relocation, or where labour or environmental advantages pull and push segments of population. Pathways are, as the name suggests, smaller than highways, and may sometimes involve subversive or unofficial (though probably still socially constrained) movements, such as smuggling. The motivations behind individual selection of pathways are contingent at a local level on ritual, mythical, and personal needs, though cumulatively they are affected by the structure of the landscape, both natural and human.

Whilst the focus of historical and archaeological research has been on establishing the routes of particular ancient highways, archaeological evidence is probably better suited to identifying the remains of pathways. If repetitive small-scale movements create the opportunity for exchange of customs, ideas and gifts, the result in the archaeological record will be areas displaying similar or interrelated cultural practices or material. In other words, pathways are what facilitate the creation of entities that have traditionally been modelled as ‘culture areas’. If we treat cultures as the result of dense dynamic networks of pathways – i.e. flows of material, ideas and obligations – rather than as reified blocs or essentialist ethnic entities, we can begin to perceive how the cumulative effect of such movements has considerable implications for social change or continuity.

Ancient pathways will manifest themselves archaeologically in the distribution of material such as pottery or architecture which requires intense interaction. The archaeological imprint of highways will be shown in materials that involve extensive interaction. Particular classes of high-value commodities, which are distributed sparsely in the material record, provide telegraphic snapshots of the nodes of these routes: ‘prestige goods’ such as precious stones or high-value textiles are more

likely to travel along highways. Simultaneously, chains of pathways might act as interregional highways, carrying materials long distances along apparently small networks. In both instances there are considerable number of items of exchange invisible to us: whether this means religious, social or political ideas on the one hand, or organic materials such as spices or narcotics on the other.

It is important to stress that this distinction between pathways and highways is not necessarily based on physical characteristics of the routes as such, but rather on the nature of movement along them, and their role in different types of exchange.

Pathways can be characterized as shorter and repetitive; highways are longer and specialized. This might be related to social class: highways are the means by which the elites connect to each other and procure the resources which facilitate their position, whilst pathways connect the masses. In theory, the locations of pathways and highways may coincide, or the same individuals may travel along both pathways and highways depending on the role they are carrying out. The distinctions may be overstated – other lines could be drawn – and the categories should be treated as one potential heuristic device to analyse routes, rather than a universal framework. However, making these distinctions reveals the potential for different types of methodology. Both types of movement facilitate interaction between agents, both people and objects, which may have profound consequences for the trajectories of the societies they connect together. The nature of exchanges that take place in each context may be somewhat different, however, and to be able to trace the evolution of these systems we need to be able to represent such routes –and such exchanges– appropriately.

3.2.2 Modes of representation: road-maps, distribution maps and culture areas

As discussed in Chapter 2, the results of traditional studies of historical routes normally are visualized in one mode of representation, namely a ‘pseudo-road-map’ in which lines representing the reconstruction of a ‘route’ or itinerary are shown on an outline map of sufficient scale. This mode of representation reflects a model of routes that is strongly affected by a modern conception of road travel and navigation. Such diagrams are part of an understandable attempt to structure our knowledge of ancient movement in ways that make sense to the modern mind, and they result from subconscious leaching of the highly prescribed and structured nature of modern roads and railways. It is fairly unlikely that ancient travels were structured in the same hierarchical way²⁷ (except, perhaps, in periods like the Roman one where such road systems were similarly ‘fixed’). But we must assume that movement was indeed ‘structured’ by other features of both natural and human landscapes.

This ‘road-map’ mode of representation may be useful sometimes, but if we are to find new ways to approach the study of routes, we must move away from our implicit definition of ‘routes’ as static linear features of the landscape and find new ways to represent movement. Rather than seeing routes as static sets of empty roads available for travel, we should see them as emergent ‘corridor-like’ entities constituted by processes which balance the opportunities for movement given by the physical (and human) landscape (‘natural routes’) and the various human

27 And it is unlikely that ancient peoples imagined or visualized their travels and interactions in this way (see thought-provoking comments in Ingold 2000).

motivations for that movement including, of course, the exchange of resources (people, materials and ideas)²⁸. Additionally, the development of such routes (what we might alternatively call ‘networks of interaction’) in turn structures the motivations of each generation by presenting them with pre-existing and endlessly fluctuating social networks. Of course such motivations and networks are invisible in the archaeological record, but the outcomes of many types of movement are inscribed through their material debris: i.e. distributions of objects, settlements and people which can be compared to each other and whose material characteristics can reveal inter-relationships (similarities of form, style, diet, common sources) which were the result of different kinds of movement and exchange.

The ‘pseudo-road-map’ fails to represent two important components of real routes, namely, (1) the materials that travel along them and (2) the density of that travel. The problem then for archaeologists and historians is how to represent routes in a suitably empirical, understandable but chronologically specific way.

The archaeologist’s solution to representing indications of interaction and long-distance exchange has long been the ‘distribution map’. Points marking the find spots of particular categories of object or locations of certain cultural features are used to illustrate the extent of interaction, but it has proven harder to find ways to represent the ‘intensity’ of such interaction in map form. One solution has been to invent boundaries for so-called ‘culture areas’ (e.g. the outline distribution of certain pottery assemblages) as a way of indicating zones within and between which different types of interaction may have taken place. The problem with both types of distribution map (point-based and area-based) is that they de-contextualize these points and boundaries from their landscape onto a sterile two-dimensional cartographic plane. As with the ‘road-map’ view of routes, the resultant images are both static and partial. The task, then, is to find new ways to visualize both the archaeological site location information that has been traditionally represented in distribution maps, and the connections between such locations, and to combine this with data on physical landscapes and movement through them.