Datasets

These open access Roman datasets can be reused for research purposes to inform or validate computational models in Roman studies. Notice something is missing? Send us an email and we’ll add it!

Open Roman Datasets

Ancient World Mapping Center Maps

Didactic maps of the ancient world for educational purposes.

Keywords: maps, atlas, geographic, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center

Amphorae stamps (CEIPAC: Roman Open Data)

Roman amphora stamps, graffiti and tituli picti from the CEIPAC database, searchable through an intuitive geographical user interface.

Keywords: amphorae, stamps, graffiti, tituli picti, ceramics, CEIPAC

Credits: CEIPAC, Roman EPNet

Amphora stamps (CEIPAC: Rubio et al. 2018)

32.375 amphora stamps from 1.278 sites included in the CEIPAC database. This dataset was used for the following paper: Rubio-Campillo, X., Montanier, J.M., Rull, G., Bermúdez Lorenzo, J.M., Moros Díaz, J., Pérez González, J., Remesal Rodríguez, J. (2018) The ecology of Roman trade. Reconstructing provincial connectivity with similarity measures, Journal of Archaeological Science, 92, pp. 37-47. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2018.02.010

Downloads:

Keywords: stamps, amphorae, ceramics, epigraphy, CEIPAC

Credits: Rubio-Campillo, X., Montanier, J.M., Rull, G., Bermúdez Lorenzo, J.M., Moros Díaz, J., Pérez González, J., Remesal Rodríguez, J., CEIPAC.

License: GPL-2, GPL-3

Amphora stamps (RTAR)

Queryable database of amphora stamps mainly from the Western Mediterranean region.

Keywords: stamps, amphorae, ceramics

Credits:

Carre, M.-B., Gaggadis-Robin, V., Hesnard, A.,Tchernia A. , Recueil de timbres sur amphores romaines (1987-1988), Aix-en-Provence, 1995.
Blanc-Bijon, V., Carre, M.-B., Hesnard, A., Tchernia A., Recueil de timbres sur amphores romaines, II, Aix-en-Provence, 1998.
Hesnard A., Recueil de Timbres sur Amphores Romaines, réflexion autour de la création d’un site Internet, dans J. Remesal Rodriguez (ed), Epigrafia Anforica, Barcelone, 2004, p. 75 -88.

Amphorae and workshops (Coto-Sarmiento et al. 2018)

413 Dressel 20 amphorae from 5 workshops in Baetica. Data for the paper Coto-sarmiento, M., Rubio-campillo, X., Remesal, J., 2018. Identifying social learning between Roman amphorae workshops through morphometric similarity. J. Archaeol. Sci. 96, 117–123. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2018.06.002

Downloads:

Keywords: amphorae, Dressel 20, ceramics, workshops

Credits: Coto-Sarmiento (2018) LearningBaetica. Github repository with data and source code for the publication Coto-Sarmiento, M., Rubio-Campillo, X., Remesal, J. (2018): Identifying social learning between Roman amphorae workshops through morphometric similarity, Journal of Archaeological Science, 96, pp. 117–123, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2018.06.002. https://github.com/Mcotsar/LearningBaetica

License: GPL-2, GPL-3

Aqueducts

Esri SHP file of aqueducts in the Roman world by the Ancient World Mapping Centre, information derived from Talbert, Richard J. A., and Roger S. Bagnall. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Downloads:

Keywords: aqueducts, water, technology, Barrington Atlas, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center, and Talbert et al. 2000.

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Athletic festivals

A set of databases of persons active in a range of athletic disciplines in contests. Data can be downloaded as .csv files. From the ConnectedContests project.

Downloads:

Keywords: athletics, festivals, contests, places

Credits: The ConnectedContests project directed by Onno van Nijf and Christina Williamson.

Bridges

Esri SHP file of bridges in the Roman world by the Ancient World Mapping Centre, information derived from Talbert, Richard J. A., and Roger S. Bagnall. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Downloads:

Keywords: bridges, water, technology, transport, Barrington Atlas, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center, and Talbert et al. 2000.

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Canals

Esri SHP file of canals in the Roman world by the Ancient World Mapping Centre.

Downloads:

Keywords: bridges, water, technology, transport, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center

Centuriation North-Italy and Tunisia

Esri SHP files of centuriation in the Roman world by the Ancient World Mapping Centre.

Downloads:

Keywords: centuriation, agriculture, Italy, Tunisia, Africa AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center

Ceramics Levant (The Levantine Ceramics Project)

Ceramics produced in the Levant from the Neolithic era (c. 5500 B.C.E.) through the Ottoman period (c. 1920 C.E.). Includes roughly 400 wares, 9000 vessels, 27 kiln locations and 5000 petrographic samples.

Keywords: ceramics, amphorae, tableware, coarse ware, levant

Credits: The Levantine Ceramics Project

Cities in the Roman Empire

A catalogue of sites with urban characteristics in the Roman Empire between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300 compiled by Jack Hanson, hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website.

Downloads:

Keywords: cities, places, settlements, geography, atlas, OXREP

Credits: If you would like to use this material, please cite both Jack Hanson’s monograph and this database.
Hanson, J. W. (2016). Cities Database (OXREP databases). Version 1.0. Accessed (date): <http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/databases/cities/>. DOI: <https://doi.org/10.5287/bodleian:eqapevAn8>
Hanson, J. W. (2016b). An Urban Geography of the Roman World, 100 B.C. to A.D. 300. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Coastlines of the Roman world

Coastlines of the Roman world, information derived from Talbert, Richard J. A., and Roger S. Bagnall. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Modified from the original coastline of Vmap0, a public domain product of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and distributed by the United States Geological Survey.

Downloads:

Keywords: water, coast, map, GIS, geographic, Barrington Atlas, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center, and Talbert et al. 2000.

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Coinage of the Roman Republice Online (CRRO)

In effect an online version of Michael Crawford’s 1974 publication Roman Republican Coinage (RRC), which is still the primary typology used for the identification of Roman Republican coin types. Uses stable numismatic identifiers and linked open data methodologies established by the Nomisma.org project.

Downloads:

Keywords: coins, typology, numismatics, Republic, Nomisma

Credits: Coinage of the Roman Republic online http://numismatics.org/crro/ .

License: ODbL v1.0

Coin hoards of the Roman Empire

Roman coin hoards with search interface allowing export of hoard findspot, dates and reference.

Downloads:

Keywords: coins, hoards, numismatics, OXREP

Credits: Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire project http://chre.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/

Coin hoards of the Roman Republic

Roman Republican coin hoards mainly from the period 155 BC to AD 2, with the ability to query online and to export query results as .csv files including the hoard URI, location, dates, coin types and findspot URI (geonames). Uses stable numismatic identifiers and linked open data methodologies established by the Nomisma.org project.

Downloads:

Keywords: coins, hoards, numismatics, Republic, Nomisma

Credits: Lockyear, Kris (2013). Coin hoards of the Roman Republic Online, version X. New York: American Numismatic Society. http://numismatics.org/chrr/ 

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)

Records every published type of Roman Imperial Coinage from Augustus in 31 BC, until the death of Zeno in AD 491. This is an easy to use digital corpus, with downloadable catalog entries, incorporating over 43,000 types of coins. Uses stable numismatic identifiers and linked open data methodologies established by the Nomisma.org project.

Downloads:

Keywords: coins, numismatics, empire, Nomisma

Credits: Online Coins of the Roman Empire http://numismatics.org/ocre/

License: ODbL v1.0

Collection of datasets in R (archdata)

The archdata package provides several types of data that are typically used in archaeological research, including Romano-British pottery chemical analysis, Oxford Romano-British pots, and Romano-British Glass elements. It provides all of the data sets used in “Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Using R” by David L Carlson, one of the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology.

Keywords: pottery, ceramics, Romano-British, Britain, glass, elements, R

Credits: David L. Carlson and Georg Roth, archdata: Example Datasets from Archaeological Research. https://cran.r-project.org/package=archdata

License: GPL-2, GPL-3

Collection of datasets in R (cawd)

An R package that collects data for the ancient world including territorial extents from the Ancient World Mapping Centre, routes and places from Orbis, roads and shipwrecks from the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations, and mints from Nomisma.

Keywords: maps, routes, roads, places, shipwrecks, coins, mints, R

Credits: Sebastian Heath

Fabrics of the the Central Mediterranean (FACEM)

Images and descriptions of fabrics of Greek, Punic and Roman pottery from production centres in the Central Mediterranean region. Includes 16 Roman fabrics.

Keywords: ceramics, fabric

Gallo-Belgic pottery in Britain

(1) quantified database of all Gallo-Belgic pottery in Britain from 478 excavations including information on findspot, County, OS Grid reference, Excavation, Context, presumed Tribal territory, Site type and Associated finds; (2) 1069 stamps assigned to 360 potters.

Keywords: ceramics, Gallo-Belgic, Britain

Credits: Jane Timby and Val Rigby, 2007. Gallo-Belgic pottery database: internet edition – http://gallobelgic.thehumanjourney.net/index.php

Karanis tax rolls database

6782 tax payments from the Greco-Roman Egyptian town of Karanis, including information on the payer, recipient, date, tax type, value and currency. Hosted by the Oxford Roman Economy Project.

Downloads:

Keywords: tax, Egypt, papyri, OXREP

Credits: Rachel Lesser and Alan Bowman.

Mines Database

Information on the mines of the Roman empire, principally those producing the main metals used in the production of coinage: gold, silver and copper. Compiled by Andrew Wilson and by Dr Hannah Friedman, hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website.

Downloads:

Keywords: mines, metals, places, OXREP

Credits: Wilson, A. and Friedman, H. (2010). Mining Database. Version 1.0. Accessed (date): http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/databases/mines_database/

Olive oil and wine presses

223 records with the location, date and number of presses. Compiled by Andrew Wilson and by Hannah Friedman, hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website.

Downloads:

Keywords: presses, olive oil, wine, OXREP

Credits: Annalisa Marzano and Miko Flohr

Orbis Roman Transport System

The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. A formal representation of the main road, river and sea transport routes with an intuitive Graphical User Interface.

Downloads:

Keywords: transport, routes, roads, geography, sites

Credits: Walter Scheidel, Elijah Meeks, Karl Grossner

License: CC-BY-3.0

Oxford Roman Pots (Fulford and Hodder 1974)

Percentages of Late Romano-British Oxford Pottery on 30 sites. Source: Fulford, M. and I. Hodder. 1974. A Regression Analysis of Some Late Romano-British Pottery: A Case Study. Oxoniensia 39: 26-33.  Part of the archdata R package by David L. Carlson and Georg Roth. The archdata package provides several types of data that are typically used in archaeological research. It provides all of the data sets used in “Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Using R” by David L Carlson, one of the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology.

Downloads:

Keywords: ceramics, pottery, Britain, R

Credits: Fulford, M., Hodder, I., Carlson, D.L., Roth, G.

License: GPL-2, GPL-3

Pleiades Places

A searchable and downloadable gazetteer of places in the ancient world. Includes all places mentioned in the Barrington Atlas. Hosted by the Ancient World Mapping Center.

Download all places:

Keywords: places, geography, atlas, GIS, geographic

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

Ports and harbours

A list of around 3000 ancient ports based on the writings of 66 ancient authors and a few modern authors, incl. the Barrington Atlas, by Arthur de Graauw.

Downloads:

Keywords: ports, harbours, water, infrastructure, DARMC

Credits: de Graauw, A. et al. 2014. “Geodatabase of Ancient Ports and Harbors,” DARMC Scholarly Data Series, Data Contribution Series # 2013-2 (version 1.1). DARMC, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4KitLDpLpYfUlhfc0hIM1lYazA/edit

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Pottery kilns of Roman Britain

1755 kiln locations originally published as: Swan V. 1984. The pottery kilns of Roman Britain (with 5 micro-fiches) (RCHME Supplementary Series 5, HMSO 1984).

Credits: The Pottery Kilns of Roman Britain by Vivien Swan.

Province boundaries and regional names

Roman province boundaries for a range of periods, other kingdoms’ and empires’ extents, and regional names, by the Ancient World Mapping Centre.

Downloads:

Keywords: provinces, empire, republic, Persian, Herod, Alexander, Hasmonean, politics, regions, map, GIS, geographic, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center

Rivers and lakes

Rivers and lakes of the Roman world, information derived from Talbert, Richard J. A., and Roger S. Bagnall. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Modified from the original coastline of Vmap0, a public domain product of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and distributed by the United States Geological Survey.

Downloads:

Keywords: water, lakes, rivers, map, GIS, geographic, Barrington Atlas, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center, and Talbert et al. 2000.

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Roads

Road information derived from Talbert, Richard J. A., and Roger S. Bagnall. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Downloads:

Keywords: roads, transport, map, GIS, geographic, Barrington Atlas, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center, and Talbert et al. 2000.

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Romano-British glass (Jackson 1992)

The concentrations for 11 major, minor and trace elements in 105 Romano-British waste glass specimens from two furnace sites (Leicester and Mancetter) from: Jackson, C. M. 1992. A Compositional Analysis of Roman and Early Post-Roman Glass and Glass Working Waste from Selected British Sites Towards an Understanding of the Technology of GlassMaking Through Analysis by Inductively-Coupled Plasma Spectrometry. Unpublished PhD thesis. Bradford University (BL: D214554). Part of the archdata R package by David L. Carlson and Georg Roth. The archdata package provides several types of data that are typically used in archaeological research. It provides all of the data sets used in “Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Using R” by David L Carlson, one of the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology.

Downloads:

Keywords: glass, elements, Britain, Romano-British, R

Credits: Jackson, C.M., Baxter, M., Carlson, D.L., Roth, G.

License: GPL-2, GPL-3

Romano-British pottery (Tubb et al. 1980)

Chemical analyses of 48 specimens of Romano-British pottery from 5 sites in 3 regions, from: Tubb, A., A. J. Parker, and G. Nickless. 1980. The Analysis of Romano-British Pottery by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry. Archaeometry 22: 153-71.
Part of the archdata R package by David L. Carlson and Georg Roth. The archdata package provides several types of data that are typically used in archaeological research. It provides all of the data sets used in “Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Using R” by David L Carlson, one of the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology.

Downloads:

Keywords: glass, elements, Britain, Romano-British, R

Credits: Tubb, A., Parker, A.J., Nickless, G., Baxter, M., Carlson, D.L., Roth, G.

License: GPL-2, GPL-3

Seas, oceans, open water

Open water information derived from Talbert, Richard J. A., and Roger S. Bagnall. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Modified from the original coastline of Vmap0, a public domain product of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and distributed by the United States Geological Survey (see http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/globalgis/metadata_qr/metadata/airfields.htm ).

Downloads:

Keywords: water, oceans, seas, map, geographic, GIS, Barrington Atlas, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center, and Talbert et al. 2000.

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

Shipwrecks Database

Ancient wrecks in the Mediterranean up to AD 1500, building mainly on the  work of A.J. Parker (1992), and the database from Julia Strauss’s PhD. Thesis (2007), hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website.

Downloads:

Keywords: shipwrecks, places, OXREP

Credits: Strauss, J. (2013). Shipwrecks Database. Version 1.0. Accessed (date): oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/databases/shipwrecks_database/

Sites on the Dutch Limes (Groenhuizen and Verhagen 2016)

A set of 242 Roman era archaeological sites along the Dutch limes, published as input to the model presented in this paper: Groenhuijzen, Mark R., and Philip Verhagen. “Testing the Robustness of Local Network Metrics in Research on Archeological Local Transport Networks.” Frontiers in Digital Humanities 3, no. 6 (2016): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2016.00006.

Downloads:

Keywords: sites, places, geographic, GIS, spatial
Credits: Groenhuijzen, Mark R., and Philip Verhagen. “Testing the Robustness of Local Network Metrics in Research on Archeological Local Transport Networks.” Frontiers in Digital Humanities 3, no. 6 (2016): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2016.00006.

Stone quarries

792 records of quarries, including information on their location, stone type and bibliographical reference. Hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website.

Downloads:

Keywords: stone, places, quarries, OXREP

Credits: Russell, B. J. (2013). Gazetteer of Stone Quarries in the Roman World. Version 1.0. Accessed (date): oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/databases/stone_quarries_database/

Strabo’s Geography

Rivers, points and lines in Strabo’s Geography, by the Ancient World Mapping Centre.

Downloads:

Keywords: Strabo, geography, regions, map, GIS, geographic, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center

Terra Sigillata stamps (Samian research)

Corpvs Vasorvm Arretinorvm  Names on Terra Sigillata from 248206 stamps. Information can be searched based on potter’s name, reading, site, bibliography and more.

Keywords: ceramics, terra sigillata, stamps

Credits: RGZM IT department, Allard Mees.

License: Digital Peer Publishing Licence (DPPL)

Terra Sigillata in Britain

Quantitative data on Terra Sigillata types, shapes and chronology for a large number of sites in Britain. This dataset is described in detail in the following paper:  Willis, S. (2005). Samian Pottery, a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and Beyond: the results of the English Heritage funded Samian Project. An e-monograph. Internet Archaeology, 17. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/1/toc.html

Downloads: spreadsheets and text files.

Keywords: ceramics, terra sigillata, Britain

Credits: Steve Willis (2005) Samian Pottery, a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and Beyond: The results of the English Heritage funded Samian Project. The Spreadsheet Data. [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000243

Terra Sigillata production sites (western Mediterranean)

A map of Terra Sigillata production sites in the western Mediterranean.

Keywords: ceramics, terra sigillata

Trismegistos

An interdisciplinary portal of papyrological and epigraphical resources
formerly Egypt and the Nile valley (800 BC-AD 800), now expanding to the Ancient World in general.

Keywords: papyri, epigraphy, Egypt

Credits: Trismegistos team

Urban areas

Extent of urban area of 63 urban settlements, by the Ancient World Mapping Centre.

Downloads:

Keywords: cities, urban, map, GIS, geographic, AWMC

Credits: Ancient World Mapping Center

Water technology

622 records of written mentions of water technology including information on their location, type, a description and dating. Hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website.

Downloads:

Keywords: water, places, technology, OXREP

Credits: Malouta, M. (2008). OXREP Water-lifting technology database. Version 1.0. http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/databases/water_technology_database. Accessed (date).