The study of historical routes connecting places is a crucial aspect to enabling a better understanding of the structure, performance and evolution of past and present transport systems around the world. Routes can be documented from their collection in historical sources, such as itineraries and inscriptions in Roman Era, books of pilgrimages in medieval times or drawn maps in more modern times.
However, the study of historical routes is currently faced with a crucial issue: there is an increasing gap between our rapidly increasing knowledge about the physical connections between places and the research community’s ability to access and aggregate this mass of information to improve our understanding of the past and present flows of people, goods and ideas these systems facilitate. By building on the Pelagios platform and community, and on the recent growth in the scholarly practice of linked open data, this project will overcome this challenge.
Itiner-e will develop the first online gazetteer of historical roads, to enhance our ability to collect, aggregate and debate historical roads, and to enable the linking of this important source of information about past societies with other resources by linking related places. This proposal concerns a resource development that aims to develop a pipeline methodology for linked open road data, set up an online platform and implement the method using the Roman routes in the Iberian Peninsula as a proof-of-concept.