RoadNet_Andes research was undertaken according to two fundamental objectives:
- developing a new methodological approach to assess the morphogenesis of road networks palimpsests
- researching the contemporary meanings of trans-border ancient roads in a conflictual international borderland
The first task consisted in conceptually defining a road networks palimpsest as the product of the accumulation, through time, of road systems of distinct chronological periods, generated by both top-down territorial planning and bottom-up repeated spatial behaviours of agents. The second task consisted in registering and assembling road networks data from distinct sources (aerial imagery, historic cartography, written and oral narratives, as well as field archaeological survey), considering not only movement infrastructures but also their environment and connected settlements. The third task implied performing and contrasting distinct spatial network analyses to model road sections’ most likely antiquity according to their connectivity to settlements of known chronology. According to the assessment of modelling results based on archaeological field data, the calculation of a chronological probability inversely correlated to the topological distance to (nodal) dated settlements, as well as the accumulated least-cost path (LCP) alongside the roads palimpsest between contemporary settlements, resulted the two most pertinent for chronological assessment. Additionally, the comparison of these LCP along the palimpsest with LCP based on pedestrian movement cost functions related to terrain slope has allowed inferring and discussing the locational characteristics’ rationales of the most-likely networks of specific historical conjunctures. This topological approach was implemented with two roads palimpsests datasets. A first case study has researched the morphological evolution of road networks since the Late Prehispanic period to the present time in a 1.000km2 mountainous basin. A second one was carried out at a macro-regional scale (20.000km2) to assess a hypothesis of Inca imperial hegemony by means of spatial controlling movements and interactions flows.
RoadNet_Andes critical heritage study on the meanings of ancient road networks was also carried out by means of two case studies. The first one has consisted in the analysis of a recent experience of co-construction of a hiking circuit in an indigenous territory of northern Chile that succeeded in its heritage-based design but not in its touristic implementation. An in-depth analysis of the socioterritorial context and on participatory action research carried out to design the circuit evidenced complex intersections between current policies on heritage, multiculturalism, and environment, relating to the 2014 inscription of the Qhapaq ñan Andean road system on the World Heritage List. A second and still ongoing case study is focusing on the meanings of ancient roads and associated memories of pre-motorized mobility through the Altiplano region, in the context of the Chilean-Bolivian borderland current conflictual dynamics.
Overall, RoadNet_Andes research in both spatial networks analysis (of ancient road palimpsests) and critical heritage study (of the current significations of these ancient roads in indigenous territories) has produced significant results disseminated through several articles published in scientific journals in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and development. These results based on the project’s Andean case studies have also been communicated in several scientific events in both European and Andean countries, and are now examined by a broader research network in order to assess the potential cross-regional and -cultural exploitation of the methodology designed by RoadNet_Andes action.
