Going the Extra Mile: Travel, Time and Distance in Classical Attica

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the physical connectivity of Attica by examining the realities of travel for Athenians wishing to engage with wider civic, social, economic and cultic institutions. This will be achieved by focussing upon the practicalities of short-, medium- and long-distance travel with the aim of differentiating aspects, modes and reasons for travel. This investigation will be realised through a series of computational scenarios created on the basis of a combination of ancient and nineteenth-century accounts of journeys through Attica along with the archaeological evidence of the Athenian road system. The results of this study shed light upon the constraints on, and opportunities for, participation in wider practices and the experience of travel for the individual traveller. Recent studies have shown there were many spaces in Attica that provided opportunities for Athenians to come together, to interact with each other and participate in civic, ritual and social institutions. The ultimate conclusions of this study will help to illustrate the fundamental connectivity and active engagement of the traveller with the Athenian landscape.

Budget Travel in the Mediterranean: A Methodology for Reconstructing Ancient Journeys through Least Cost Networks

“…Justification for the use of early nineteenth century evidence to make inferences about travel in the ancient world is similar to that advanced by authors who quote accounts of travellers such as Leake, Dodwell and Gell (e.g. Seifried & Gardner 2019;McHugh 2019). Both are significantly lower than the β = 3.00 for our λ = 7 network for the Peloponnese.…”

“…At the core of this is reconstructing the movement of people across the landscape. Movement can be investigated at the scale of single paths between adjacent settlements, such as journeys that could be undertaken in the course of a day (McHugh 2019;Parcero-Oubiña et al 2019;Seifried & Gardner 2019). Where longer journeys are undertaken, an interconnected network of paths and settlements can be constructed, through which movement occurs in multiple stages (Herzog 2013;Verhagen et al 2014;Verhagen, Nuninger & Groenhuijzen 2019).…”

“…Generation of LCPs is often limited to those between a small number of places due either to computational costs, or a confined geographical area of interest. For example, McHugh (2019) creates single LCPs representing a day's journey within Attica, which she defines as up to 15 hours. However, to model a multi-stage journey, a network of individual routes must be considered.…”

Going to See the Nymphs: Landscape and Religious Experience at the Zar Trypa Cave (Mount Ossa, Thessaly)

“… 63 Fachard and Pirisino 2015; McHugh 2017; Seifried 2017; McHugh 2019; Ludwig 2020 offer some recent examples of the application of ‘least cost path analyses’ in the study of Classical and Hellenistic Greece.…”