Connectivity on a Roman/Sasanian frontier: route systems in the Upper Tigris River Valley in South-East Turkey

Southeastern Anatolia was one of the regions in which the Roman and Eastern empires fought for centuries for supremacy. In Late Antiquity, the Roman/ Sasanian border shifted from the Euphrates River to the Tigris River: the upper Tigris River valley was thus embedded in the Eastern Roman “limes”. Changes in settlement patterns that occurred in the fourth century AD seem to confirm the limit of the Roman control of the area west of the Batman River, one of the tributaries of the Tigris River in its upper course. I will discuss how regional and local routes, settlement patterns, rural landscapes and military installations changed in this portion of the Roman/Sasanian borderland after AD 363: this may help for a better understanding of the local landscape through the inspection of the relationship between connectivity and borderland organization on the edges of empires.