'Lost' Roads of Ancient Rome Discovered with 3D Laser Scanners

livescience.com

61 points·mtviewdave··5 comments

It's a bit weird how much stuff we just plough over in the UK.

Here's a Roman "fort" (probably not a fort) in Google Maps. The square bit in a field near the middle of the image (South of "Tunnel House Inn").

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Coates,+Cirencester,+Glo...

This image shows the old "fort" (probably a villa), a canal, a railway, the nearby church in Coates village (one of two in Gloucestershire that have an anthropophagus) and some footpaths.

If you look on LIDAR data you see the spoil heaps from digging the canal tunnel (between Coates and Sapperton.

LIDAR data made available: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10379279

Sadly, this interesting site has been plundered by irresponsible detectorists, and much of it has been ploughed over.

http://www.bgas.org.uk/tbgas_bg/v119/bg119083.pdf

It's weird to me that we have this site and we're happy to just lose all that stuff.

Cool. One can probably estimate the age of an area by the irregularity of the field perimeters. In the central and west US those would be rectangular.

I wonder if and hidden roads with stones are left.

Here's a link for this villa near Coates, and for Vindolanda, the fort shown in the featured article, using a rendering in which I've tried to emphasise the fine detail, from my map as mentioned in the above linked thread;

Coates: https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=SO9645000358

Vindolanda: https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=NY7705366344

Here's what I think is the source website with ground level and LIDAR pictures of the road: http://www.romanroads.org/gazetteer/rib-catt.htm

Are there any LIDAR maps of the U.S.?

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