4 ms·

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

28 points by myrrh 11y ago

gcr 11y 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 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.

28 points by myrrh 11y ago

gcr 11y 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 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.