Unravelling Urban Religious Landscapes: Visualizing the Impact of Commerce on Religious Movement at Ostia

Abstract

Ritual activity constitutes one religious practice that pervaded ancient cities like Ostia, Rome’s ancient port. Despite the extensive surviving evidence at Ostia for religious practice, the ways in which the urban landscape shaped religious movement has not received previous attention. This article focuses on how economic activity may have helped to structure areas of ritual movement throughout the city. Using the Urban Network Analysis Toolbox developed for ArcGIS, areas of economic activity are studied by applying betweenness centrality to determine ‘hotspots’ of movement. These ‘hotspots’ can be used as nodes for undertaking further study of processional movement. The preliminary results suggest that the proposed methodology can enrich archaeological investigations into ritual movement and religious landscapes.