Nicholas Tripcevich

Caravan Archaeologies Workshop/Taller de Caravanas Arqueológicas

Terrain effects and caravan mobility

Topography is one of the primary considerations for burdened caravans transporting goods across mountainous terrain. The steepness and roughness of terrain, together with available water and graze, these continuous physical phenomena constitute the physiography that caravans must negotiate. Separate but intersecting concerns are the cultural features of landscape that include historical travel routes and existing trails, traditional trade locations and crossroads, contested areas and bandit country, and protocols for negotiation with the locals -- the farmers and herders – on whose land a caravan is traversing. In an animated landscape these cultural and physiographic distinctions converge.

Developments in terrain analysis tools allow us to tailor cost functions to fit documented travel routes. While these methods usually emphasize the effects of slope over other variables it is possible to use these tools in an exploratory way to appreciate the demands placed on humans and animals on the road. One may train cost functions to fit historically documented journeys or by using detailed evidence from analogous caravan groups, and the resulting routes showing speed of travel and the possible route choices shed light on the movement of caravans in antiquity. Cost functions need not be deterministic in how they are applied, they can be used to highlight trends and divergences that underpin the cultural or historical landscape in which travelers move.