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.

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.

List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Part I: Challenging Network Methods and Theories
1. Introduction: Challenging Network Perspectives on the Past, Tom Brughmans, Anna Collar, Fiona Coward
2. Networks in Archaeology: Between Scientific Method and Humanistic Metaphor, Carl Knappett
3. Networks or Work-Nets? Actor-Network Theory and Multiple Social Topologies in the Production of Roman Terra Sigillata, Astrid Van Oyen
Part II: Challenging Network Analysis of Archaeological and Historical Data
4. Analytical Challenges for the Application of Social Network Analysis in Archaeology, Matthew A. Peeples, Barbara J. Mills, W. Randall Haas, Jr., Jeffery J. Clark, and John M. Roberts, Jr.
5. How Reliable are Centrality Measures for Data Collected from Fragmentary and Heterogeneous Historical Sources? A Case Study, Marten During
6. Uncovering the Hidden Routes: Algorithms for Identifying Paths and Missing Links in Trade Networks, Constantinos Tsirogiannis and Christos Tsirogiannis
Part III: Challenging Network Models
7. Can Archaeological Models Always Fulfil our Prejudices?, Ray Rivers
8. Which Network Model Should I Use? Towards a Quantitative Comparison of Spatial Network Models in Archaeology, Tim Evans
9. Networks, Homophily, and the Spread of Innovations, Anne Kandler and Fabio Caccioli
Index