Over the last decade, many scholars have lamented the dearth of any internationally accessible study on the landscape and topography of Roman Dacia. Florin Fodorean's book goes some way toward redressing that gap in the scholarly literature. The work, which is an expanded English translation of the author's 2004 doctoral thesis (published in 2006 as Drumurile din Dacia romana) consists of an introduction, four core chapters and an extensive bibliography. The text is also supported by eighty-four illustrations, including numerous drawings, high-quality black-and-white photographs and forty-three maps.

Following a preface by Professors Mihai Bärbulescu and Kai Brodersen, the work opens with a short introduction. Here F. states that he will present new archaeological data for the Roman road network in Romania and use it to reconstruct the landscape of Roman Dacia. He explains that to accomplish this he will integrate this evidence with a re-evaluation of literary and epigraphic sources for the road networks, and a fresh assessment of evidence for known Roman settlements and the information on Dacia provided by historic maps.

In the first chapter, F. discusses Roman geographical perceptions of Dacia, both before and after the conquest, and summarizes what is known about the Dacian Wars. He goes on to explain the centrality of roads and road networks to the Romans' development of a provincial landscape. In the course of his exposition, F. also summarizes the history of research on roads in the Roman Empire and outlines the course of his own researches in the field. The breadth of scholarship presented is impressive, but some discussion of recent work on Roman road surveying methods done by Michael Lewis (Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome (2001)) and John Poulter (Surveying Roman Military Landscapes across Northern Britain (2009)) would have been welcome.

Ch. 2 considers the literary and epigraphic evidence for roads in order to reconstruct the main Roman transportation network. Focusing on the literary documents first, F. provides a synthesis of research done on the Antonine Itinerary and Tabula Peutingeriana down to 2012, in order to demonstrate the nature of these documents. He argues that the source for both came from an itinerary or map drafted by the Roman army building the road network in the years following the conquest. Next, the nine known milestones from Dacia are presented in detail in order to reconstruct the sequence of construction and repairs undertaken by the Roman administration.

In ch. 3, the focus is on the rural settlements of Dacia: their topography and the physical remains of the routes connecting them. In order to show how the road network structured the province, the author details the physical remains of each settlement site in the province with an emphasis on features such as walls, buildings and aqueducts. The spotlight is on the well-known sites at Potaissa and Napoca, but he does not neglect profiles of the smaller settlements. Once the evidence for the cities has been set out, attention shifts to the archaeological remains for the roads connecting them. F.'s presentation of fresh data from years of field work is remarkable and greatly improves our understanding of the region. The chapter is rounded out by a short section on the villas of Dacia and an excursus on bridges. It must be admitted that while all the structures presented are treated with exemplary ability, the inclusion of analysis derived from available small finds and ecofacts, as well as from some of the non-Roman settlement sites, would have added an extra dimension to the discussion both here and in the next chapter.

In the fourth and final chapter, the literary and archaeological evidence is set out alongside evidence from maps of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and aerial photographs, to reconstruct the landscape of the Roman province. As part of the reconstruction, space is given to a very valuable overview of past projects. The presentation of these historic projects provides greater depth and control over the synthesis of past map data and archaeological evidence, as well as allowing scholars to see both the history and historiography behind modern interpretations. For most readers though, the core of the chapter will probably lie in several case studies built out of the synthesized data. These individual studies reconstruct key administrative and military points in the province as well as showing patterns of Roman interaction involving social venues such as hot springs.

This volume is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Roman presence in the Dacian landscape, their geographic perceptions of the region and the history of scholarship undertaken on the province. More importantly, this work is the best study of the road network of Roman Dacia available outside the author's 2006 publication. Given the vast quantity of information to be found here, it is somewhat unfortunate that referencing topics in the text can be difficult since there is no index. However, as compensation there is a very detailed and well-organized table of contents.