WHAT IS A ROMAN ROAD ?

french to english translation by SiSustainable

After the Roman conquest, and up until the fifth century at least, everywhere in Western Europe, we must distinguish between two systems of roads: the rural service roads, for exclusive local agricultural use, and the long distance roads, often running for hundreds of kilometres. It is only these last which warrant particular interest, since it is only they which carried traffic that generated regular economic and political contacts between distant countries.

These long-distance routes in turn can be divided into two distinct groups: those that are traced on interfluvial lines, usually indicated by the dividing line between two rivers, and those established over mountains and valleys, often at right angles to the hydrographic network. The typology and function of each group were very different [1].

. The roads guided by watersheds are built at ground level, where bedrock is usable – outcropped or close to the surface – forming a firm and stable natural foundation. These roads avoid every source of humidity, such as boggy patches and valley heads, with the result that they often trace a winding path. When they cross a watercourse, their fall from and rise back on to the interfluvial area are managed by means of tributary valleys, diametrically opposite one another if possible. These connecting roads are often built, for purpose of economy, on bedrock outcrops and on the dry ridges of watersheds. The highways are thus built on dry and solid ground over long distances. In principle they are never cobbled or bordered by ditches. Their width is in general small: 2 to 3 metres. Since their line is strictly dependent on the geology and topography of the land, there is no need to erect long and expensive earthworks. This kind of road was thus widely employed in periods when technical mastery was rudimentary – for example before the Roman conquest – or during regressive phases of material civilization, as at the end of the first millennium. The local toponymy and microtoponymy designated such roads pouges (and variants of this name), a word derived directly from the Latin podium (meaning "high up"), which designated a series of crests and so refers to the topography of these roads.

Besides, or in the immediate proximity of, these ancient roads are found numerous monuments from pre-history to the Roman conquest, which attest their origin and primitive usage: flint and funerary mounds from the Iron Age line their route. But these venerable pathways are often re-used during the Roman period and above all the mediaeval period: the chronological spacing of their sitings on the road verges can thus identify the origin and duration of their usage as well as their change of function over the centuries and millennia.

The second group of routes constructed over hills and valleys represent a typology which indicates very different functions. Two series of roads must be distinguished.

 The first, like our motorways, alternate between cuttings and embankments. In the sections that traverse steep slopes, these routes pass through higher ground by means of deep cuttings, whereas in passing through marshes and in places of shallow slopes, or indeed completely flat ground, these routes are constructed as causeways - veritable monuments of road-building - including an internal architecture usually stratified with permeable and impermeable layers. The width of the rollable surface of these roads usually hovers around the 6-metre mark, with two lateral ditches, wide and deep, defining the road surface which is almost never, in occidental Europe, covered with bricks or slabs, but in general reinforced with river stones or small rocks. The archaeological vestiges that line these roads exclude the periods before the Roman conquest and are rarely found after the tenth century: only the High Middle Ages, notably during the Merovingian period, generated structures on the verges of these roads. Their use thus seems to have been relatively brief, tied nearly exclusively to the administrative and political organization of the Roman world: and so to them only should be reserved the qualification of Roman roads.

The written sources of classical antiquity identify indeed the principal functions of these roads: to carry the cursus publicus, the public imperial mail and connect as fast as possible the urban settlements, both principal and secondary, separated by intermediate relays, mansiones or mutationes. In principle, only the officials could take these roads, and individuals wishing to benefit from them had to pay a very heavy toll: the evectio. The Roman roads thus did not privilege commercial traffic, outside that tied to the monopolies of the state.

The toponymy and microtoponymy of the Limousin designate these paths under the name of either estrade (and variations of this name) – a word deriving from the latin strata (via), which is to say paved with stones – or chaussade, which is to say a road built on an embankment. These names thus refer, not so much to the topographic path of these routes, as to the veritable monument that is the built road itself.

 The second series of itineraries in this group present a typology altogether distinct from the previous one: though equally constructed over hills and valleys, the rollable surface is often of medium width, hovering around the 2.80 m mark, and this surface, sometimes paved or cobbled, is delimited by a line of large flat stones. There is no lateral ditch. This typology corresponds in general to the roads created or repaired in the XVII and XVIII centuries.

. Although a detailed and precise chronology in the Limousin is complex , it seems that the ancient road network divided the occupation of this region in two successive phases:

1) The very old road tapestry of pouges, following the strips of the interfluvial areas, constitutes without doubt a type of primary path, quasi-instinctive, which draws its origins from the passage of large game in winter, which found refuge in light, dry and rocky terrain close to the crests. Following them, as the abandoned fragments of flint collected close to these paths testify, hunters and shepherds overlapped. Numerous funeral mounds from the Iron Age, found also around the network of pouges, attest that this pattern was used for a long time all the way up to the Roman conquest, but had its origins in the most ancient prehistory.

2) It is only after the Roman conquest that the Limousin completes its network of long distance roads with a few, carefully built, highways. But this new road network is limited simply to completing the old network, and not to replacing it, and so Romanization is clearly attested by the importance and quality of the adjacent monuments along these roads used by the previously independent Gauls. The new network, born at the conquest, was dedicated to interurban connections unifying the administrative centres and the secondary settlements. When a pre-existing road conformed to this plan it was kept, and only when needed were new roads created. That is why, on one and the same road in use after the Roman conquest, there are alternate sections of pouge and estrade. Moreover, in the Mediaeval period which saw the construction of so many bridges and crossings, these seem to have served simply to create ramps connecting the castles and abbeys to the road network inherited from antiquity, which was used nearly in its entirety.

Research into, and the exact localization and authentication of, Roman roads in the Limousin are incomplete. Other than the identification of embankments and cuttings, current studies employ tools and methods borrowed from diverse complementary disciplines:
 toponymy and microtoponymy; certain toponyms can help reveal the proximity of a Roman road.
 written or epigraphic documentation eg Peutinger’s tables, Antoninus’ roads, and funeral stelae of dead travellers.
 the study of the structures on the verges of these roads, notably those of Christian worship; the most ancient names of churches correspond to the very first period of the diffusion of Christianity. The Roman roads were sometimes the vectors.
 aerial and satellite photos sometimes permit us to find the "ghosts" of the roads and the religious buildings erected on their verges, now worn away.
 and, of course, research into, and the study and identification of, the milestones which border these roads!

Last update: November 26, 2010