On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]
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Re: On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]
#2When 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.Re: On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]
#3Nice 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.
Re: On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]
#4Nice 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, bu…
> 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.
Re: On the orientation of Roman towns in Italy (2007) [pdf]
#5Nice 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, bu…
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.