In Search of Ancient Pre-Roman Imperial Roads: A Case Study of the Application of Remote Sensing in Road Archaeology in the Southern Levant

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

The authors addressed the majority of the concerns I expressed. 

Author Response

First, we would like to sincerely thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive reviews.

Below are our responses.

Review Report Form 1

Open Review

(x) I would not like to sign my review report
( ) I would like to sign my review report

Quality of English Language

( ) I am not qualified to assess the quality of English in this paper
( ) English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible
( ) Extensive editing of English language required
( ) Moderate editing of English language required
( ) Minor editing of English language required
(x) English language fine. No issues detected

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors addressed the majority of the concerns I expressed. 

Submission Date

22 August 2023

Date of this review

23 Aug 2023 10:53:36

Thank you !

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The authors present a well documented ground truthing about ancient pre-Roman Imperial roads in the southern Levant. I suggest some minor revisions. The introduction would improve if the authors would add a small summary of the results concerning the previous research. 

I would suggest to organize the results section with subparagraphs regarding the description of the investigation of  the different roads. It would be more clear. 

Maybe merging Figure 7 and 8 (reducing Figure 7 and add a zoon with figure 8) but this is a personal opinion. 

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors present a well documented ground truthing about ancient pre-Roman Imperial roads in the southern Levant. I suggest some minor revisions. The introduction would improve if the authors would add a small summary of the results concerning the previous research. 

Answer: This is presented in the ‘discussion and conclusions’, lines 610-694.

I would suggest to organize the results section with subparagraphs regarding the description of the investigation of  the different roads. It would be more clear. 

Answer: Corrected.

Maybe merging Figure 7 and 8 (reducing Figure 7 and add a zoon with figure 8) but this is a personal opinion. 

Answer: We prefer to present a clear view of both the entire course of the road (Fig. 7) and many details of its most eastern section (Fig. 8).

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

First, I want to appreciate the number of detailed photos and maps provided by the authors! Now for suggested edits:

The first sentence of the introduction is incorrect. Near Eastern “hollo ways” are well-known as roads linking different settlements. For example, the Ur 2003 article cited by the authors (Ur, J. 2003 CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study. Antiquity 77(295):102-115) demonstrates this. The citation used here is from 1991 a decade older than Ur 2003, which itself is still 20 years old. One potential fix would be to change the “Until recently, …” to “Until the 21^st century, …” to be more accurate to the data as known and the citations used.

Line 23, abstract, “… detected artifacts, …” should probably say “… detected features and artifacts, …” given the items listed and used in the article.

Lines 65-66, for LCP and LCC, I suggest adding the following two citations for other users wishing to replicated the GIS analyses.

-- White, Devin A. 2015 The Basics of Least Cost Analysis for Archaeological Applications. Advances in Archaeological Practice 3(4):407-414.

-- White, Devin A., and Sarah L. Surface-Evans (editors) 2012 Least Cost Analysis of Social Landscapes: Archaeological Case Studies. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, UT.

Line 69, I think that “features” are meant instead of “artifacts” unless the authors mean to say that they can identify sherds/shards, chert/flint, etcetera via their remote sensing imagery.

Line 71, could the authors expand on what they mean by “old topographic maps” to specify what potential eras and times do these maps for the region come from? Colonial, Islamic, Roman, etc.? The dates mentioned in the later half suggest mostly maps from 1910s to 1970s, I think.

For lines 78-79, what cut-offs are used for “short-distance” versus “long-distance” travel? Since 30m is specified, would the authors expect that higher resolution imagery (e.g., 10m, 1m, or submeter) would improve the accuracy of short-distance routes? Later they suggest this, but it wouldn’t hurt to foreshadow that finding here.

Lines 89-90 mentions “cartographic hints from the subject literature” to identify potential roads. This should be expanded, based on the author’s experiences what other details can they share so that another team could replicate their results? How were cartographic hints determined from the literature? What methods, visualizations, or techniques were valuable for interpreting satellite images? The intuition here is that there were old maps or texts suggesting the existence of potential roads and that these were followed in the remote sensing image as abnormally linear features, features that were slightly compacted (like hollow ways), or specific road construction materials were observed along the route. Please make this more explicit.

Line 130, the length of Wadi Zarqa-Main Road is included in text, but if the authors have an idea on the width (or the variation in widths along the road) then it would be nice to include here as well.

Line 351, please include a potential date range for “early Islamic period” for those who do not work in this region.

Lines 574-579 describe the V-shaped and U-shaped profile of erosion in ravines and how they can be misinterpreted as hollow ways. While this article is well-illustrated with lots of good figures, a figure to contrast these profiles with stratigraphy and help illustrate why the U-shape ravines are misinterpreted would be useful here.

Lines 609-619, this article is well illustrated, but could the authors provide an example of one of these old roads on a cartographic map? Anything 100 years old should be in the public domain if copyright is a concern.

Final suggestion.

The authors may want to create a table towards the end of the article that includes the road name, geographic area/region, length, (variable) width if available, start/end altitudes, and potential dates based on recovered ceramics in order to aggregate these data from the text into a single location to facilitate future comparisons and use by others.

n/a

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First, I want to appreciate the number of detailed photos and maps provided by the authors! Now for suggested edits:

The first sentence of the introduction is incorrect. Near Eastern “hollo ways” are well-known as roads linking different settlements. For example, the Ur 2003 article cited by the authors (Ur, J. 2003 CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study. Antiquity 77(295):102-115) demonstrates this. The citation used here is from 1991 a decade older than Ur 2003, which itself is still 20 years old. One potential fix would be to change the “Until recently, …” to “Until the 21^st century, …” to be more accurate to the data as known and the citations used.

Answer: Corrected.

Until the 21^st century, it was commonly held that no archaeological evidence of interurban ancient roads in the Near East [1], and in the southern Levant in particular [2], was preserved from before the construction of Roman Imperial roads.

Line 23, abstract, “… detected artifacts, …” should probably say “… detected features and artifacts, …” given the items listed and used in the article.

Answer: Corrected.

First, the modern methods enabled us to provide a high-resolution capture of the detected features and artifacts, including the courses of ancient roads and the locations of road-related archaeological sites.

Lines 65-66, for LCP and LCC, I suggest adding the following two citations for other users wishing to replicated the GIS analyses.

-- White, Devin A. 2015 The Basics of Least Cost Analysis for Archaeological Applications. Advances in Archaeological Practice 3(4):407-414.

-- White, Devin A., and Sarah L. Surface-Evans (editors) 2012 Least Cost Analysis of Social Landscapes: Archaeological Case Studies. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, UT.

Answer: Included as [44] and [45]

Line 69, I think that “features” are meant instead of “artifacts” unless the authors mean to say that they can identify sherds/shards, chert/flint, etcetera via their remote sensing imagery.

Answer: Corrected.

All of these data types were tested as tools for detecting features using the few ancient pre-Roman Imperial roads that had been archaeologically attested in the southern Levant.

Line 71, could the authors expand on what they mean by “old topographic maps” to specify what potential eras and times do these maps for the region come from? Colonial, Islamic, Roman, etc.? The dates mentioned in the later half suggest mostly maps from 1910s to 1970s, I think.

Answer: Corrected.

Most important among these is that old topographic maps (especially British and German colonial maps)  represent a very promising source of data for potential discoveries since they include both implicit and explicit clues suggesting the existence of ancient roads.

Types of our remote sensing data and their use are also closer explained in the ‘discussion and conclusions’, lines 610-694.

For lines 78-79, what cut-offs are used for “short-distance” versus “long-distance” travel? Since 30m is specified, would the authors expect that higher resolution imagery (e.g., 10m, 1m, or submeter) would improve the accuracy of short-distance routes? Later they suggest this, but it wouldn’t hurt to foreshadow that finding here.

Answer: Corrected.

In particular, the use of Least Cost Paths and Corridors for modeling short-distance travel (which struggles with local obstacles within a valley, plateau, etc.) appears to be ineffective. At the same time, the use of Least Cost Corridors for simulating long-distance travel (at least regional routes crossing many geophysical obstacles along the way) offers some promising results.

Lines 89-90 mentions “cartographic hints from the subject literature” to identify potential roads. This should be expanded, based on the author’s experiences what other details can they share so that another team could replicate their results? How were cartographic hints determined from the literature? What methods, visualizations, or techniques were valuable for interpreting satellite images? The intuition here is that there were old maps or texts suggesting the existence of potential roads and that these were followed in the remote sensing image as abnormally linear features, features that were slightly compacted (like hollow ways), or specific road construction materials were observed along the route. Please make this more explicit.

Answer: Corrected.

The shapefiles were created on the basis of cartographic evidence from the subject literature (sketches and maps of roads, although they were of a mostly non-satisfactory quality or scale) and the team’s research on satellite images (see Figure 2).

Types of our remote sensing data and their use are also closer explained in the ‘discussion and conclusions’, lines 610-694.

Line 130, the length of Wadi Zarqa-Main Road is included in text, but if the authors have an idea on the width (or the variation in widths along the road) then it would be nice to include here as well.

Answer: Corrected.

Its length is about 12 km (width mostly between 2 and 4m), and it connects the site of Ataruz in the Moab Plateau with the Jordan Valley

Line 351, please include a potential date range for “early Islamic period” for those who do not work in this region.

Answer: Included now.

638-1099 CE

Lines 574-579 describe the V-shaped and U-shaped profile of erosion in ravines and how they can be misinterpreted as hollow ways. While this article is well-illustrated with lots of good figures, a figure to contrast these profiles with stratigraphy and help illustrate why the U-shape ravines are misinterpreted would be useful here.

Answer: 

In the case of our field study, our focus was not on stratigraphy, but mainly on geomorphology (relief). The road gully mentioned in the literature meets well the criteria of a natural little dry valley (ravine), despite its flat bottom it has branches and sloping slopes, while the sections with RR points definitely meet the criteria of an anthropogenic ravine (also flat bottom, but almost vertical slopes and no branches). Also, the difference in the depth of the forms is thought-provoking.

Lines 609-619, this article is well illustrated, but could the authors provide an example of one of these old roads on a cartographic map? Anything 100 years old should be in the public domain if copyright is a concern.

Answer: Included now as figure no 38.

Final suggestion.

The authors may want to create a table towards the end of the article that includes the road name, geographic area/region, length, (variable) width if available, start/end altitudes, and potential dates based on recovered ceramics in order to aggregate these data from the text into a single location to facilitate future comparisons and use by others.

Answer: Included now as table no 1.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have written an extensive field report based on their survey work and previously published remote sensing analyses. From the abstract onwards this text is an archaeological field report and lacks the characteristics of a scientific paper (e.g. dates of archaeological field research, number of pottery sherds etc. are really irrelevant in the abstract of a scientific paper). Given the limited focus on the remote sensing methodology and the extensive archaeological results section, I believe it would be best published in another journal. The remote sensing aspects of this work have been already published by the authors in the following article:

Marciak M., Szypuła B., Sobczyński D. Searching for ancient pre-Roman imperial roads: state of research and some methodological recommendations. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 2023, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01820-6

This would have been the aspect that is most relevant to the readership of Remote Sensing.

The paper first and foremost lacks the appropriate structure to be published as a scientific article. It is interesting and the data is there, but the authors need to distill the key findings of their work. At present, it merely is a loose collection of fieldwork data without clarity as to whether this represents a methodological advance or what it means for the archaeology of the region. The conclusions further highlight this lack of clarity and conceptual strenght:

Third and finally, some methodological conclusions were reached following the field work. For example, it is clear that a multi-source approach to identifying ancient roads including the use of archival cartographic sources, archival and modern satellite and aerial imagery, and databases of archaeological sites is still necessary [This is hardly a new idea. The authors have better results in this paper than to hide it with a vague methodological comment]. However, there can be no doubt that spatial analyses and remote sensing studies must be accompanied by archaeological fieldwork to promote a coherent research effort. [This is such a broad statement that it is basically meaningless.]

One possibility would be to re-structure the paper based on the question the authors pose further down in the text: How can we discover actual or suggest potential routes between chosen ancient sites?

Archaeological methods are often messy processes with many data sources and this can be represented in a paper, but it is important to properly structure the findings and highlight the relevance accordingly. Otherwise, the paper is useless for the readers. In order to be suitable for publication in Remote Sensing, this paper needs a substantial structural improvement and an actual focus less on field data but on remote sensing methodology - else why choose this journal?

Focus on structural and conceptual adaptations.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents the results of a ground truthing session that was conducted to verify the findings of a remote sensing analysis on ancient roads in a specific region. The paper is visually rich, providing readers with a clear understanding of the evidence identified through remote sensing and subsequently verified in the field. Currently, the paper mainly functions as a catalog of road sections that were visited during the fieldwork phase, following the 'remote' study of various sources. While the paper is addresses an important issue (the need of ground truthing remote sensing research), it could benefit from further development and discussion.

The authors acknowledge that the fieldwork presented in the paper is a crucial component of their larger project, which aims to combine remote sensing research with archaeological survey. They mention three primary goals achieved during the first fieldwork phase. Firstly, they identified evidence that had been observed through remote study. Secondly, they suggest that certain roads may have been used in different periods, based on specific findings during the fieldwork. Lastly, they claim to have reached methodological conclusions.

However, the paper lacks a substantial discussion of the results. The authors should have included more detailed methodological conclusions, such as assessing the accuracy of each remote sensing method used to study the road network and discussing the inferences made about the roads' dates and the success of their remote recognition. A comprehensive discussion would enhance the paper's value and contribute to the broader field of research on ancient roads.

In conclusion, while the paper serves its purpose of presenting the evidence of remote sensing research and ground truthing, it would benefit from further development and a more thorough discussion of the results and methodological conclusions. By providing a more comprehensive analysis, the paper can significantly contribute to our understanding of ancient road networks and the importance of integrating remote sensing with fieldwork in archaeological research.

Specific recommendations/points to clarify:

1) Introduction Clarification: In the introduction, in the title, and in the abstract, make it clear that this paper focuses solely on the ground truthing session carried out after the remote sensing analysis. Clearly state that the remote study has been previously published and is not included in this paper. This will prevent any confusion among readers about the scope of the current paper.

2) More Comprehensive Discussion: Expand the discussion section to include more in-depth methodological conclusions and analyses. Address the accuracy and limitations of each of the remote sensing methods used, comparing their performance in identifying the road network. Discuss the implications of the ground truthing findings on understanding the age and development of the roads.

3) Conclusions and Future Directions: In the conclusion section, summarize the key findings from the ground truthing session and highlight the significance of this research for the broader field of archaeology. Provide suggestions for future research directions, addressing potential improvements in both remote sensing methodologies and ground truthing techniques

I would recommend a native speaker to check the English. My feeling is that, in some cases, the chose of more appropriate wording could make the message stronger.