Dromography (Historic Routes History)

The eastern sources of IX–X centuries mentioned three centers of rus’: Kujaba, Arta and Slava. The question of the location of these centers has been the maŸ er of controversy for 200 years. Researchers usually identifi ed Slavia with area near Novgorod, Kujavia with Kyiv region. Based on the analysis of eastern sources, the author came to the conclusion that three centers of rus’ formed on the ancient trade route from Bulgar on the river Volga to Central Europe region. No doubt that Kujawy be identifi ed with Kyiv, which was nearest to Bulgar. The other two centers were moving west of the Kyiv. Arab geographer al-Idrisi indicates the distance from Cujaba to Arta and from Arta to Slava. This makes it possible to place Artania on the map precisely. Author identifi ed Arta as ancient fortifi ed seŸ lement – site of ancient town Plisnesk, located in the Upper Western Bug. The third center, known as Slava, was likely site of ancient town Volyn`, situated on the river Huchva.
Key words: primary Rus’, eastern sources, geography, Kujaba, Arta, Slava, al-Idrisi.

Many of the most important roads of medieval Bilād al-Šām were dotted with caravanserais, sheltered stopovers whose construction really developed in the region during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods.1 These buildings can be considered as evidence of the passage of a road in a precise spot within a given period and consequently provide useful information to map out the routes which crossed the region at that time. The purpose of this article is to use data provided by wayside caravanserais to compare and integrate with available data on the routes in order to provide a more comprehensive view of the Levant communications network from the end of the 12th century to the beginning of the 16th century, particularly trying to highlight its evolution and changes.

A network of ports in late medieval Western Greece on the basis of the routes described in Portulan I (A. Delatte, Les Portulans Grecs. Paris 1947, p. 26-53); the ports are localized on the basis of P. Soustal, Nikopolis und Kephallenia (TIB 3). Vienna 1981. Visualisation for the new project "Ports and landing places at the Balkan coasts of the Byzantine Empire (4th-12th century). Monuments and technology, economy and communication", see also: http://www.academia.edu/2969226/Ports_and_landing_places_at_the_Balkan_coasts_of_the_Byzantine_Empire_4th-12th_century_._Monuments_and_technology_economy_and_communication_-_Project_outline

Peter Soustal and Andreas Külzer have reconstructed the networks of land and sea routes for the Thracian provinces in the Byzantine centuries (Soustal, Peter. 1991. Thrakien (Thrakē, Rodopē und Haimimontos) (Tabula Imperii Byzantini 6). Vienna, 132–148; Külzer, Andreas. 2008. Ostthrakien (Eurōpē) (Tabula Imperii Byzantini 12). Vienna, 192–211), which we adapted for our network analytical software and created topological networks (thus, localities are modelled with regard to their relative position to each other, not with regard to their position in “real space”): the street-network includes 119 nodes (or localities) and 175 links (or routes between nodes). Were visualise here the network with regard to some standard network analytical measures on the level of individual nodes (nodes are scaled according to their respective quantitative measures:
First graph: Degree; the degree of a node is the number of links connected to it; degree centrality indicates the relative significance of a node within a network due to its number of connections to other nodes.

Second graph: Betweenness; betweenness centrality measures the extent to which a node lies on paths between other nodes and indicates the relative significance of a node as “intermediary” within a network due to its position on many (or few) possible routes between other nodes.

Third graph: Closeness; closeness centrality measures the length of all pathes between a node an all other nodes. The more central a node is the lower its total distance to all other nodes. Closeness can also be used as a measure of how fast it would take to spread resources or information from a node to all other nodes. In our network model here, the differences in closeness centrality between all nodes are relatively small.
For further information see: J. Preiser-Kapeller, Networks of border zones – multiplex relations of power, religion and economy in South-eastern Europe, 1250-1453 CE, in: Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, "Revive the Past" (CAA) in Beijing, China. Amsterdam 2012, 381–393 (online: http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller/Papers)