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Description
There are three categories that the settlements are grouped into:

1 Definite location of a town - a physical site for which we are positive what the name was (aka, we have connected the archaeological remains with a historic town we know about from the sources).
2 Probable location of a town - we have a site that we are fairly certain what the name was (but it is not definite).
3 Possible location of a town - a town from historic sources for which we are not sure of where it was located exactly (but we have a possible archaeological site in the area that is a possible match).

There are several reasons why concentrations of towns vary to such a degree, but the following are the most important ones:
Firstly - some areas were just not as desirable as others. they provided less resources, were further away from major centers or were too dangerous for most people.
Secondly, some areas were less centralized, and had fewer bigger towns but a lot more smaller centers (North Africa is an example of this, where there were numerous agricultural villages spread around the countryside).
Thirdly, and probably the biggest factor here - the state of research. Sometimes we just know more about certain areas than the others.

Disclaimer: the map shows all the towns that were recorded by the DARMC project. It is definitely not every Roman town that ever existed - no such database exists as of yet. This map is a mere attempt of visualizing the best database that we’ve got.

Map shows 11 655 towns in total
Data collected by: DARMC PROJECT (Harvard University)

Description
There are three categories that the settlements are grouped into:

1 Definite location of a town - a physical site for which we are positive what the name was (aka, we have connected the archaeological remains with a historic town we know about from the sources).
2 Probable location of a town - we have a site that we are fairly certain what the name was (but it is not definite).
3 Possible location of a town - a town from historic sources for which we are not sure of where it was located exactly (but we have a possible archaeological site in the area that is a possible match).

There are several reasons why concentrations of towns vary to such a degree, but the following are the most important ones:
Firstly - some areas were just not as desirable as others. they provided less resources, were further away from major centers or were too dangerous for most people.
Secondly, some areas were less centralized, and had fewer bigger towns but a lot more smaller centers (North Africa is an example of this, where there were numerous agricultural villages spread around the countryside).
Thirdly, and probably the biggest factor here - the state of research. Sometimes we just know more about certain areas than the others.

Disclaimer: the map shows all the towns that were recorded by the DARMC project. It is definitely not every Roman town that ever existed - no such database exists as of yet. This map is a mere attempt of visualizing the best database that we’ve got.

Map shows 11 655 towns in total
Data collected by: DARMC PROJECT (Harvard University)