On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0703/0703213.pdf

by myrrh • 11 years ago

28 4 11 years ago

gcr• 11 years ago

When posting links to Arxiv, please link to the web page rather than the PDF file. It makes it easier to cite the content and to preview what it's about before reading.

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0703213

    On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy
    
    Author: Giulio Magli
    Submitted on 23 Mar 2007
    As is well known, several Roman sources report
    on the existence of a town foundation ritual,
    inherited from the Etruscans, which allegedly
    included astronomical references. However, the
    possible existence of astronomical orientations
    in the layout of Roman towns has never been
    tackled in a systematic way. As a first step
    in this direction, the orientation of virtually
    all Roman towns in Italy (38 cities) is studied
    here. Non-random orientation patterns emerge
    from these data, aiming at further research
    in this field.

rubidium• 11 years ago

Nice job collecting the data, but paper could have benefited from a map of the towns with a legend that shows the orientation of the towns.

The author discusses clusters of towns with orientations, but as a non-subject matter expert I struggled to follow the trends that may be suggested.

Paper is also incomplete in that the table on the final page doesn't have headings. I hope the published version in 2008 had it, but it's under-paywall and doesn't appear on the Authors webpage.

alepper• 11 years ago

I hope the published version in 2008 had it

The published version has headings: Latitude, Latin name, Modern name and date of Roman foundation, Axis, Amplitude at solstice, Published research. Still no map, though.

notahacker• 11 years ago

If ever a paper needed a proper appendix its this one.

As a minimum I'd want to see the orientation of the town against it's topographical features and the orientation of the Roman roads connecting the town with its neighbours which would seem like the obvious alternate hypotheses to explain towns' orientations.

On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]

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