Network analysis in archaeology

The Caribbean Sea was the centre stage of the earliest, sustained encounters between the New and Old Worlds, heralding the mass movement of people, goods and ideas between two previously unconnected parts of the world. The repercussions hereof are woven into the fabric of modern multi-ethnic Caribbean society. However, our current understanding of this important chapter in the history of the world is skewed, because there are still large shortfalls in our knowledge of indigenous agencies in these encounters. A trans-disciplinary field of research, based on the synergy of archaeological and network approaches towards local contexts, provides fresh insights on how indigenous agency developed during the encounters, particularly in terms of migration, mobility and interaction dynamics. The present paper illustrates how four indigenous Caribbean communities (re-)negotiated, adapted and integrated their multi-scalar social networks prior to and in the course of the different phases of the colonization process.

In this proof-of-concept study we investigate the potential and chal-lenges of a formal network approach for the examination of 1st to 3rd century CE kinship networks in ancient Palmyra (in present-day Syria). The recent availabil-ity of a large, digitised archaeological dataset allows for a thorough reassessment of previously studied genealogies. By applying network and genealogical formal methods to these for the first time we can re-evaluate the genealogical complete-ness and gender bias in our sources, and scientifically explore the tendency for in-termarriage within an extended Palmyrene family.We combine archaeological information from funerary portraits in the exhaus-tive database created by the Palmyra Portrait Project with textual sources from fu-nerary and public inscriptions, and critically evaluate the differences and limits of these sources for genealogical studies. Applying formal network and genealog-ical techniques to these datasets, as well as comparing five different case studies, allows us to draw attention to four key points: (1) our sources confirm a high de-gree of genealogical incompleteness and gender bias, which was already known from studies of Palmyrene society; (2) to evaluate whether the relinking index can enhance debates on endogamy and exogamy practices in Palmyra; (3) funer-ary and public inscriptions are highly complementary and reveal different gene-alogical structures; and (4) to assess the assumptions behind creating uncertain relationships in funerary cases and their effects on our results.

This communication aims to present the information concerning the identification of furniture and know-how originally from eastern Mediterranean in Corsica through Middle Bronze Age (1600-1200 b.C.) and Late Bronze Age (1200-800 b.C.).
In this island, the question of the presence of Aegean elements was, for a long time, associated to a theory involving a foreign-born population, the Sherden, a group mentioned within the famous Sea Peoples. After the abandonment of these historic-factual constructions, the insular archaeological research attached itself to the analysis of the sociocultural character of insular groups from the Bronze Age, without trying to connect them to the cultural dynamics from eastern Mediterranean.
After three decades of scientific introspection, it seems important to propose a postponed inventory on this specific issue. The issue of relations between the Aegean and Near-Eastern areas is documented today by several discoveries, revisions on objects and specific analysis made for fifteen years. In the early 2000s, the first formal testimony of the eastern importation recognized in Corsica is a copper ingot of ox-hide typology and Cypriot origin, found out of context in Sant’Anastasia, in the northeast area of the island. This object, published by F. Lo Schiavo, illustrates the integration at least marginal of Corsica into the Mediterranean networks of metal distribution in the late second millennium. This discovery thereby came to partially fulfill an important gap in research, particularly illustrated by the strong contrast expressed by the number of remains of this type between Corsica and Sardinia. At the same time, the realization of analysis (laser ablation coupled to mass spectrometry) on vitreous furniture unearthed during ancient excavations of the sites of Foce, Tiresa and Filitosa permitted to set the context of production, revealing the near-eastern origin of the materials. 
More recently, the discovery of a set of ornaments in connection in a sepulchral context of the late Middle Bronze at the site of Campu Stefanu (southwest) allowed obtaining of one of the largest repositories for this type of production throughout the western Mediterranean. This necklace is composed by 25 blue-glass beads of Near-Eastern origin, even Egyptian, and of 29 Baltic amber beads of Aegean typology, which show, in addition, a perfect physical, chemical and morphological superposition with isolated beads from contemporary sepulchral contexts of Sardinia. In this context, the formal non-recognition of Helladic crockery in Corsica, while several cases are known and published in Nuragic area, seems to be explained by a delay in research.
Besides these direct testimonies betraying the importation of exotic prestige goods in Corsica between the fourteenth and the twelfth centuries, recent achievements illustrate the existence of technical transfers between the island and the Mycenaean world around the middle and late second millennium. These phenomena are notably materialized by the strong technical and iconographic analogies observed during repoussé work in metal foils. The matrices recognized in Corsica present indeed profound occurrences with those individualized in Greece, as well as the finished objects to which they are attached. Unlike importing exotica and bullion, repoussé metalwork is not known in Sardinia and peninsular Italy during those times, thereby introducing a direct transfer of know-how between these two territories.
Through these few examples, of which we sense a short-term enrichment, we’ll try to measure and explain the integration of different types of remains within the native society, in order to draw the position of the island amongst the networks between the two basins of the Mediterranean.

This paper presents the methodology and initial interpretations of research carried out as part of the EPNet Project (ERC-2013-ADG 340828). Using network analysis, information from the tituli picti on Cretan amphorae (VIII form; PO08) in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV has been checked against the records in the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names. These data build up into a network that makes it possible to interpret the trade connections between Crete and Pompeii. The full or abbreviated names that appear in the tituli are identified in the Lexicon, taking into account various criteria for filtering the data. A map is then obtained of the geographical distribution and frequency of certain names, reflecting the family traditions of the individuals involved in this Cretan wine trade route. The hypothesis is validated by an epigraphic and onomastic study, by archaeological evidence of the spatial distribution of amphorae in the Mediterranean, and by reformulating the electronic data processing. Defining the involvement of families and cities will provide a more detailed knowledge of private and public factors in the exchange system. This will make it possible to determine the extent to which the Roman economy and politics together would have influenced production and social dynamics on the island of Crete.
RESEÑA POR / REVIEW BY:
R. VARGA; JOURNAL OF ANCIENT HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY, 4:2 (2017).
http://jaha.org.ro/index.php/JAHA/article/view/256
R. SOUZA; BMCR 2017.11.34
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2017/2017.11.34/

This special issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research brings together papers highlighting archaeological research on households from East Asia. Contributing authors examine this ubiquitous social unit as a " topic of " central inquiry, treating the household as an important subject in itself as well as the locus of various human interactions that crosscut all categories and levels of society. This collection provides comparable case studies from a vast and diverse region encompassing China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan.

Recogemos en este volumen una serie de trabajos dedicados, unos a mostrar algunos aspectos vinculados a la investigación actual, relacionados con el estudio del instrumentum domesticum y la
economía romana. Otros son la primera muestra del desarrollo de los nuevos enfoques surgidos del proyecto ERC Advanced Grant Production and Distribution of Food during the Roman Empire: Economic and Political Dynamics (EPNet) (ERC-2013-ADG 340828).

Hasta ahora, la aplicación de métodos formales, nacidos fuera del ámbito de la investigación histórica, está poco desarrollada dentro de nuestra especialidad. La “ominosa cuestión” de los estudios de Historia Antigua es la falta de datos. Los modelos interpretativos de la economía antigua han partido siempre de análisis deductivos, que dependen siempre del grado de conocimientos del investigador y de sus apriorismos. A lo largo de estos años hemos conseguido reunir una gran cantidad de datos, muchos de los cuales pueden ser presentados como datos seriales gracias a la información obtenida en el Monte Testaccio.

Es ésta una circunstancia, la abundancia de datos y el poder ordenar
cronológicamente muchos de ellos, es lo que permite los nuevos enfoques propuestos. En última instancia se trata de confrontar los modelos y explicaciones hasta ahora ofrecidas dentro del ámbito
histórico, con modelos formales nacidos dentro del ámbito de las ciencias matemáticas y en el ámbito de las ciencias de redes.
Además, estamos haciendo migrar nuestra base de datos CEIPAC, ya puesta en Internet en 1995, a un sistema ontológico de bases de datos, en el que, gracias a un sistema de metadatos, podamos interrelacionar diversas bases de datos que amplien nuestros conocimientos y la capacidad de relacionar multiples aspectos de la investigación.

Dado que los trabajos presentados proceden de ámbitos científicos en los que los sistemas de citación son diversos, se han respetado los sistemas propuestos por cada uno de los autores.

Migration was a key social process contributing to the creation of the 'Chaco World' between AD 800 and 1200. Dynamic social network analysis allows for evaluation of several migration scenarios, and demonstrates that Chaco's earliest ninth-century networks show interaction with areas to the west and south, rather than migration to the Canyon from the Northern San Juan. By the late eleventh century, Chaco Canyon was tied strongly to the Middle and Northern San Juan, while a twelfth-century retraction of networks separated the Northern and Southern San Juan areas prior to regional depopulation. Understanding Chaco migration is important for comprehending both its uniqueness in U.S. Southwest archaeology and for comparison with other case studies worldwide.

The dispersal of Iroquoian groups from St. Lawrence River valley during the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. has been a source of archaeological inquiry for decades. Social network analysis presented here indicates that sites from Jefferson County, New York at the head of the St. Lawrence River controlled interactions within regional social signaling networks during the 15th century A.D. Measures indicate that Jefferson County sites were in brokerage liaison positions between sites in New York and Ontario. In the network for the subsequent century, to which no Jefferson County sites are assigned, no single group took the place of Jefferson County in controlling network flow. The dispersal of Jefferson County populations effectively ended this brokerage function concomitant with the emergence of the nascent Huron-Wendat and Iroquois confederacies and may have contributed to the escalation of conflict between these entities. These results add to a growing literature on the use of network analyses with archaeological data and contribute new insights into processes of population relocation and geopolitical realignment, as well as the role of borderlands and frontiers in nonstate societies.

Recent advances in computer and environmental science, climate modelling and
other disciplines as well as the availability and processability of (openly shared) big data have triggered fundamental changes in research over the last decades and expanded the toolbox of archaeological methods. While traditional methods (i.e. typochronology, mapping sites) remain important and continue to be used to study material culture complexes and past human societies over time and space, novel quantitative approaches based on spatial analysis, however, are rapidly gaining momentum. The archaeological community has recognized their importance to support and add value to archaeological data as their contextualisation and interpretation.

Im Rahmen des von der Alexander von Humboldt – Stiftung geförderte Projektes „Studien zum neolithischen und bronzezeitlichen Siedlungs- und Wirtschaftswesen im Vorfeld der polnischen Westkarpaten“ (Professor T. L. Kienlin/Köln, Professor P. W. Valde-Nowak/Kraków) wurde im Jahr 2011 die durch die polnische Landesaufnahme (AZP) u. a. zeitlich als spätbronzezeitlich angesprochene Fundstelle Janowice 44 (AZP 106-65/103) als ein Gräberfeld der Lausitzer Kultur identifiziert. Hatte es nach den vollzogenen verifizierenden Feldbegehungen und der geomagnetischen Prospektion zunächst den Anschein gehabt, es handele sich um eine spätbronzezeitliche/früheisenzeitliche Siedlung, zeigte die im Sommer 2011 durchgeführte Ausgrabung schnell den Irrtum und förderte ein Gräberfeld zu Tage, dessen Keramikinventare im Löss nur aufgrund der räumlichen Bezüge als Befunde erkenntlich waren - Verfärbungen der Grabgruben konnten kaum dokumentiert werden.
Aufgrund der Lage in der stark reliefierten, ackerbaulich genutzten Vorgebirgszone der polnischen Westkarpaten (Powiat Tarnów, Rożnower Hügelland, Kleinpolen) ist von einem starken Erosionsgrad auszugehen. U. a. aus diesem Grund sind Urnengräberfelder im Untersuchungsgebiet eher selten und ihr analytisches Potential ist stark begrenzt. Neben den Urnengräbern wurde auch eine große Struktur, die im Magnetogramm sichtbar war und deren Funktion bzw. Typ zunächst fraglich war, in künstlichen Schichten ausgegraben. Es zeigten sich jedoch viele Knochenfragmente und Scherben, die auf mehrere durch einen Baumwurf gestörte Gräber hindeuteten, wie u. a. die Kombination von Korrespondenz- und Netzwerkanalyse der Keramik zeigte. Aufgrund der gewählten Ausgrabungsmethode konnte diese These räumlich nur unzureichend unterstützt werden.
In der Sommerkampagne des Jahres 2014 wurde auf modernstes Vermessungsequipment in Form eines Differentialgps der Firma Ashtech zurückgegriffen, welches über die Echtzeitkorrekturen der kleinpolnischen Landesvermessung eine Messgenauigkeit von 1-2 cm (Radius) im Messmodus RTK gewährleistet. Deshalb wurden die Scherbenfragmente zweier weiterer potentieller Baumwürfe per Einzelfundeinmessung erfasst und ihre technologisch-typologischen Aspekte in einer Datenbank festgehalten. Die Keramik, die geborgen wurde, deutete auf weitere zerstörte Gräber hin.
Im Vortrag sollen  verschiedene Ansätze, die gemessenen „Punktwolken“ zu interpretieren, vorgestellt werden. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass die dreidimensionale Darstellung des Messbildes die Rekonstruktion der Grabausstattung insoweit hinreichend rekonstruiert, als dass ohne Einzelfundeinmessung und die damit gewonnenen räumlichen Lagebezüge über die Minimalanzahl und Zusammensetzung der zerstörten Gräber nur spekuliert werden kann und diese für die Gräberfeldanalyse, insbesondere für die Erstellung einer Horizontalstratigrafie, verloren wären.