61 — Connecting Harbours. A comparison of traffic networks across ancient and medieval Europe

This paper poses the positioning of harbors in ancient Europe as a graph-traversal problem, and allows us to simplify research into this area by analyzing traffic patterns and accessibility as a graph analysis.

The authors developed a database of communication and transport hubs in first-millennium Europe as part of a Priority Programme (a German national research grant). They then populated directed multiedges between these nodes, with directional weights corresponding to the ease of transport along that edge. For example, transit downstream is easier than traveling the same route upstream. These data were also enriched with GIS information encoding the physical paths taken by shipping or transport vessels, whether by land path or river.

This enabled the project to encode information like ease of access for individual ports, or graph metrics — such as node betweenness — to interpret the importance of individual harbors in the network.

The researchers hope that this work, which can expand to accomodate more of Europe, include heigher resolution spatial information, or include the rest of the planet, will enable more powerful analysis and interpretation of early Europe and how earlier cultures traveled or moved within it.