The Connected Past Challenges to Network Studies in Archaeology and History

One of the most exciting recent developments in archaeology and history has been the adoption of new perspectives which see human societies in the past-as in the present-as made up of networks of interlinked individuals. This view of people as always connected through physical and conceptual networks along which resources, information, and disease flow, requires archaeologists and historians to use new methods to understand how these networks form, function, and change over time. The Connected Past provides a constructive methodological and theoretical critique of the growth in research applying network perspectives in archaeology and history, and considers the unique challenges presented by datasets in these disciplines, including the fragmentary and material nature of such data and the functioning and change of social processes over long timespans. An international and multidisciplinary range of scholars debate both the rationale and practicalities of applying network methodologies, addressing the merits and drawbacks of specific techniques of analysis for a range of datasets and research questions, and demonstrating their approaches with concrete case studies and detailed illustrations. As well as revealing the valuable contributions archaeologists and historians can make to network science, the volume represents a crucial step towards the development of best practice in the field, especially in exploring the interactions between social and material elements of networks, and long-term network evolution.

1 - Introduction: Challenging Network Perspectives on the Past
2 - Networks in Archaeology: Between Scientific Method and Humanistic Metaphor
3 - Networks or Work-Nets? Actor-Network Theory and Multiple Social Topologies in the Production of Roman Terra Sigillata
4 - Analytical Challenges for the Application of Social Network Analysis in Archaeology
5 - How Reliable are Centrality Measures for Data Collected from Fragmentary and Heterogeneous Historical Sources? A Case Study
6 - Uncovering the Hidden Routes: Algorithms for Identifying Paths and Missing Links in Trade Networks
7 - Can Archaeological Models Always Fulfil our Prejudices?
8 - Which Network Model Should I Use? Towards a Quantitative Comparison of Spatial Network Models in Archaeology
9 - Networks, Homophily, and the Spread of Innovations

Tom Brughmans is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Konstanz. Anna Collar is Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology at Aarhus University. Fiona Coward is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University.