Patterns of Movement through the Upper Mesopotamia: the Urbana-Yale Itinerary as a Case-study

During the past three decades Historical Geography has gradually, albeit radically, transformed its research principles and has been supplemented by a more complex historical perspective which combines a number of different disciplines and methodologies. Within the framework of this "spatial turn", an increasing number of computational approaches for modelling human behaviours have emerged and have allowed to address, in a more formal manner, questions about the emergence, articulation and function of the dynamics of movement and interaction, supplying new keys of interpretation of the existing historical evidence. Among the different approaches available today, two deeply interconnected computational techniques proved to be of great use for the study of movement dynamics: the Cost Surface Analysis (CSA) and the Least Cost Path (LCP) analysis. The purpose of this contribution is to investigate research perspectives offered by these new computational techniques in combination with the well-known potentialities of ancient itineraries for the comprehension of the historical geography. In particular, this contribution will focus on the northern section of the Urbana-Yale itinerary - its stretch between ?ubat-Enlil (the modern Tell Leilan) and Harran - whose unique features apparently fit the methodological prerequisites needed for a computational modelling of such a genre.