Margary numbers are the numbering scheme developed by the historian Ivan Margary to catalogue known and suspected Roman roads in Britain in his 1955 work The Roman Roads of Britain.[1] They remain the standard system used by archaeologists and historians to identify individual Roman roads within Britain.[1] It is not known how the Romans identified the roads they built within Britain, and well-known names such as Watling Street and the Fosse Way largely date from the Anglo-Saxon period, are sometimes ambiguous or duplicated, and cover only a small proportion of the known network.[2]
Margary's numbering system follows similar conventions to modern road numbering systems.[1] He divided roads into three categories: Main Routes are given single-digit numbers, Principal Branches two-digit numbers and Minor Branches three digit numbers.[3] Individual sections of longer routes are identified by adding letters to the route number, for example Dere Street (Margary 8) is divided into sections 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d and 8e.[1] Double letters are sometimes used to indicate parallel or alternative routes.[2] Lesser roads in particular areas are given similar numbers – for example many roads in Wales have numbers in the 60s.[2]
Margary's cataloguing system has been criticised as being essentially arbitrary in several respects.[4] Margary's hierarchy of routes is not necessarily that of the original designers or users of the network.[5] Evidence for whether the Romans considered different lengths of road to form parts of a single route can be ambiguous, so the fact that they are given a single Margary number can be misleading.[1] Margary's network also largely consists of roads built by the Romans, not necessarily roads used by the Romans, who may have continued to use native British trackways.[6]
Margary's system is nonetheless widely used for its practicality,[4] and the awarding of a Margary number to a route came to be considered a hallmark of authenticity among researchers in the field.[7]
Main routes and principal branches
References
- ^ Davies 2008, p. 46.
- ^ Davies 2002, p. 168.
- ^ Bishop 2014, p. 138.
- ^ Davies 2002, p. 24.
- ^ Bishop 2014, p. 120.
- ^ Bishop 2014, p. 121.
- ^ Bagshawe 1979, pp. 9–10.
- ^ Bishop 2014, pp. 138–139.
Bibliography
- Bagshawe, Richard W. (1979). Roman Roads. Oxford: Shire Publications. ISBN 9780852634585.
- Bishop, M. C. (2014). The Secret History of the Roman Roads of Britain and their Impact on Military History. Barnsley: Pen and Sword. ISBN 9781473837256. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
- Davies, Hugh (2002). Roads in Roman Britain. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 9780752425030.
- Davies, Hugh (2008). Roman Roads in Britain. Oxford: Shire Books. ISBN 9780747806905.