Henry E. Eccles (1962, 98) described logistics as “the bridge between the economy of the nation and the tactical operations of the combat forces.” The limitations faced by ancient societies in waging war were related to their capacity to produce, muster and transport resources in a timely fashion. Understanding these constraints requires looking not only at the accounts of military operations, but also at the broader economic and political context in which these campaigns were situated.

As for the supplies needed to support soldiers on the move, food and water were of utmost importance. Victuals (food provisions) had to be able to survive long trips, which demanded knowledge of techniques of food conservation. A list of military supplies to be sent to the English army in Scotland in 1308 CE illustrates the nature of a campaign diet: “500 quarters of wheat, 1,000 quarters of corn, 200 quarters of peas and beans, 100 quarters of salt, 4,000 dried fish and 300 tuns of wine.”¹ Different types of victuals depended on the economic profile of the society in question and left behind different kinds of evidence.

Cereals were staples in the diet of many ancient civilizations, but bread lasted only a few days. As such, fresh bread had to be made by the soldiers themselves, first by grinding grain with hand-mills and then by baking it in a hearth or campfire. Some remains of both hand-mills and hearths have survived,² and breadmaking implements are sometimes mentioned by written sources. Meat needed to be preserved to avoid spoiling unless they were transported “on the hoof” – i.e., bringing livestock with the army and consuming them as the campaign progressed. The remains of animal bones in ancient military camps offer an indication of the type of animals that made up the diet of the warriors.³ Preserved fish was another invaluable provision.⁴ The location of ancient fish processing stations can be inferred from the existence of sites, such as salting vats and smoking pits, although one should keep in mind that some facilities (such as drying screens) seldom leave archaeological evidence behind.⁵

The capacity to transport victuals across vast distances was another constraint to logistics. Estimates based on modern field trials suggest warriors can carry no more than two weeks’ worth of supplies on foot.⁶ Longer campaigns demanded victuals to be transported by pack animals or vehicles, the speed and effectiveness of which depended on the existence of roads. Knowledge of the itinerary taken by armies is, therefore, a crucial element to understand ancient logistics.

At its simplest, a rough approximation of these routeways can be obtained by calculating the distance “as the crow flies” – in a straight line – between identifiable toponyms in ancient sources. This method, however, tends to be inaccurate, as it ignores the friction of terrain. Matching these identifiable toponyms to roads in the present communications grid may yield more realistic results, but one should not assume modern routeways have ancient precursors unless evidence of such is available. Likewise, the existence of a well-documented communication system at one point in history (e.g. the Roman highway network) should not be extrapolated into a later period, when some of these routes might have been abandoned.

Direct archaeological evidence of ancient routeways sometimes appears in surveys and excavation reports. In the absence of this type of data, analyzing patterns of settlement can reveal how sites in each region were connected. If several sites dating from the same period can be found along a contemporary road or natural passageway, there is a strong chance of a predecessor to that route existed at that point in the past. Repositories such as Ménestrel and the Archaeological Survey of Ireland make this type of investigation easier, as researchers can consult entire databases of catalogued sites. Older charts and surveys, such as the 19th century Ordnance Survey maps of the United Kingdom and Ireland, are also invaluable, as they might include landmarks that have since been destroyed and place names that have fallen out of use.

The itinerary of armies was also closely related to the natural environment. As James C. Scott (2009, 54) remarked, authority flows easily in favorable terrain, but “runs out of political breath” when confronted with obstacles such as bogs, marshes, mountains and dense vegetation. If enough information is obtained about the historical vegetation cover of a given region – for example, with the aid of palaeoecological techniques – predictive modelling techniques can be used to infer the location of probable routes. One of the most widespread methods for this kind of analysis are least cost path algorithms. They work by assigning each fraction of the landscape a “weight” based on its terrain and topography and using a software to calculate an optimal path between two given points. More complex models may also incorporate human and/or cultural points of interest, such as preferred river crossings, enemy outposts, foraging spots, raiding targets, camping locations and more.⁷  An alternative approach to predicting military routes is Agent-Based Modelling (ABM), a computational technique that consists in creating a virtual representation of a past environment populated by autonomous and semi-autonomous agents and running simulations to understand how they interact with one another. A benchmark in the application of ABM to the study of military logistics is the MWGrid (Medieval Warfare of the Grid) project, which modeled the march of the Byzantine army to the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 down to the individual soldier.⁸

References

• Connolly, P. (ed.), 1998: Irish Exchequer Payments 1270-1446, Dublin.
• Craenen, B. et al., 2012: “A System for Distributed Agent-Based Simulation in the Digital Humanities”, in: 2012 IEEE/ACM 16th International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications. Anais.
• Eccles, H. E., 1962: “The Logistics Aspects of Command Control Systems”, Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 9, n. 2, p. 97-106.
• Gaffney, H., 2006: “Superiority of numbers: methodologies for modelling the behaviour of armies”, in: Haldon, J. (ed.), General Issues in the Study of Medieval Logistics, Leiden/Boston, p. 251-272.
• Højte, J. M., 2005: “The Archaeological Evidence for Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region”, in: Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region, Aarhus, p. 133-160.
• King, A., 1999: “Animals and the Roman Army: evidence of animal bones”, in: Goldsworthy, A. & Haynes, I. (ed.).,The Roman Army as a Community,Portsmouth, p. 139-149.
• O’Neill, T., 1987: Merchants and Mariners in Medieval Ireland, Dublin.
• Roth, J. P., 1999: The Logistics of the Roman Army at War (264 B.C.-A.D. 235), Leiden/Boston/Koln.
• Scott, J. C., 2009: The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven/London.

Notes

1. Connolly 1998, 202.
2. Roth 1999, 49.
3. King 1999.
4. O’Neill 1987, 33.
5. Højte 2005, 142.
6. Gaffney 2006, 254.
7. O’Brien & Bergh 2016, 200.
8. Craenen et al. 2012.