03-31-2013, 02:11 PM
It's worth adding that all the previously unknown Roman roads I have found have appeared through aerial photography, geophysics, or even digging them up when there was no absolutely no sign above ground. Lidar is good for uncultivated (or lightly farmed, especially pasture) and can be brilliant in forested areas (whether wildwood or plantation), but there is nary an agger that shows up on lidar that can't actually be seen on the ground (especially following all the other clues Margary & co list), so fieldwalking a route is usually your best weapon, using Google Earth for the recce. As an example, English Heritage did a superb survey of Savernake Forest, showing all sorts of landscape features (including the Roman roads in there). Of course, you can find all of it by stumbling about in there (been there, done it, tick), but it is much easier to map from such an airborne survey, rather than planetabling your way through trees, and gets around problems of permissions and accessibility.
Mike Bishop
Mike Bishop
