The Connected Past: people, networks and

complexity in archaeology and history

A two-day collaborative, multi-disciplinary
symposium
The University of Southampton
24-25 March 2012
Sponsored by Archaeopress, The Classical Association, the Archaeological Computing
Research Group, Oxford University Press, the University of Southampton USRG Complexity
in Real-world Contexts, the University of Southampton Web Science DTC and the University
of Southampton Faculty of Humanities

Over the past decade network has become a buzz-word in many disciplines, including
archaeology and history. Scholars in both disciplines have begun to explore the idea of
complex networks in their efforts to understand social relationships in the past as well as
technical relationships in their data, using methodologies drawn from complex network
models devised by sociologists and physicists such as Duncan Watts and Albert-Lszl
Barabsi. These recent developments in network analysis are based on a long tradition of
work in many disciplines, including sociology, mathematics and physics, but with the
increasing ubiquity of powerful computing technology across the academic spectrum,
network perspectives and methodologies are now becoming understood and used more
broadly throughout the sciences and humanities.

The often large and complex datasets common in archaeology and history have stimulated the
use of various techniques from network analysis as a tool for exploring these data, and such
applications are already proving to be innovative and fruitful approaches to topics such as the
transmission of ideas and technologies, the movements of people, objects and belief systems,
interregional interactions and maritime connectivity. This growing interest is reflected in the
increasing number of conferences on network analysis we have seen in these disciplines,
including Networks in the Greek World in Rethymnon, Crete (2006), Communities and
Networks in the Ancient Greek World held in Dublin (2009), a session at the Society for
American Archaeology (2010), and a session at Computer Applications and Quantitative
Methods in Archaeology (CAA) Beijing (2011).

These meetings have resulted in original archaeological and historical applications of

network analysis published in collected volumes and journal papers, and clearly attest to its
potential. However, the adoption of network techniques within archaeology and history
remains surprisingly limited. Existing applications have not yet tapped into the full potential
of a network perspective. The nature of historical and archaeological data as indirect and
fundamentally fragmentary reflections of past dynamic processes certainly presents network
analysts with a challenge, but one that promises to allow archaeologists and historians to
make valuable contributions to the new science of networks, especially as regards the
exploration of temporal change in networks over supra-generational and potentially
evolutionary timeframes.
This conference will provide a platform for pioneering, multidisciplinary collaborative work
in the field of network science. It aims to bring together the disparate international
community of scholars working to develop network-based approaches and their application to
the past and to provide a forum for the discussion of the most recent applications of the
techniques, in order to ask what has been successful or unsuccessful, to foster cross-
disciplinary collaborations and cooperation, and to stimulate debate about the application of
network science within the disciplines of archaeology and history in particular, but also more
broadly across the entire field.

Conference objectives:

To provide a forum for the presentation and debate of multidisciplinary network-

based research and debate the ramifications of applying network-based perspectives
and methodologies to archaeological and historical data

To establish a group of academics using network-based approaches to archaeology,

history and allied disciplines

To foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaborative work aimed at integrating

analytical frameworks for understanding complex networks and their application to
historical and archaeological problems.

To stimulate debate about the theory and application of network analysis within
archaeology and history and the relevance of this work for the continued development
of network theory in other disciplines.

Saturday 24 March
8-9.00 Registration

9-9.15 Introductions

9.15-10.00 First keynote

Alex Bentley
Networks, complexity and the archaeology of complex social systems

10-10.15 Coffee

10.15-11.30 First session: Theoretical and methodological concerns

Tom Brughmans
Networks of networks: A critical review of formal network methods in
archaeology through citation network analysis and close reading
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
Luhmann in Byzantium. A systems theory approach for historical network
analysis
Andrew Bevan
When nodes and edges dissolve. Incorporating geographic uncertainty
into the analysis of settlement interactions
11.30-11.45 Coffee

11.45-1 First session: Theoretical and methodological concerns

Astrid Van Oyen

Actors as networks? How to make Actor-Network-Theory work for
archaeology: on the reality of categories in the production of Roman terra
sigillata
Sren Sindbk
Contextual network synthesis: Reading communication in archaeology
Marten Dring
How reliable are centrality and clustering measures for data collected
from fragmentary and heterogenuous historical sources? A case study

1-1.45 Lunch and poster session

1.45-3 Second session: Big data and archaeology

Barbara Mills et al.

Dynamic Network Analysis: Stability and Collapse in U.S. Southwest, A.D.
1200-1500
Caroline Waerzeggers
Networks in Babylonia: social complexity and cuneiform data
Mark Depauw and Bart Van Beek
Authority and Social Interaction in GraecoRoman Egypt

3-3.15 Tea

3.15-4.55 Second session: Big data and archaeology

Eivind Heldaas Seland

Travel and religion in late antiquity
Alessandro Quercia and Lin Foxhall
Weaving networks in pre-Roman South Italy. Using loom weight data to
understand complex relationships and social identities
Angus Mol and Corinne Hofman
Networks Set in Stone: Lithic production and exchange in the early
prehistoric northeastern Caribbean
Craig Alexander
Networks and intervisibility: a study of Iron Age Valcamonica

4.55-5.10 Break

5.10-5.55 Second keynote (and wine reception)

Carl Knappett
Networks of Objects, Meshworks of Things

6.00-7.00 Reception
7 onwards Dinner and drinks in The Crown pub

Sunday 25 March
9-9.45 Third keynote
Irad Malkin
The Spatial Turn, Network Theory, and the Archaic Greek World

9.45-10 Coffee

10-11.15 Third session: Dynamic networks and modelling

Ray Rivers

Anne Kandler and Fabio Caccioli

The effects of network structure on cultural change
Qiming Lv, Caitlin Buck et al.
Network-based spatial-temporal modelling of the first arrival of
prehistoric agriculture

11.15-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.45 Third session: Dynamic networks and modelling

Tim Evans
Which Network Model Should I Use? A Quantitative Comparison of Spatial
Network Models in Archaeology
Juan A. Barcel et al.
Simulating the Emergence of Social Networks of Restricted Cooperation
in Prehistory. A Bayesian network approach
Marco Bchler
Generation of Text Graphs and Text Re-use Graphs from Massive Digital
Data

12.45-1.30 Lunch and poster session

1.30-2.45 Fourth session: Personal, political and migration networks

Wilko Schroeter
The social marriage network of Europes ruling families from 1600-1900
Ekaterini Mitsiou
Networks of state building: State collapses and aristocratic networks in
the 13th century Eastern Mediterranean
Evi Gorogianni
Marrying out: a consideration of cultural exogamy and its implications on
material culture
2.45-3 Tea

3-4.35 Fourth session: Personal, political and migration networks

Elena Isayev
Edging beyond the shore: Questioning Polybiuss view of Rome and Italy
at the dawn of the global moment of the 2nd century BC
Claire Lemercier and Paul-Andr Rosental
Networks in time and space. The structure and dynamics of migration in
19th-century Northern France
Amara Thornton
Reconstructing Networks in the History of Archaeology
Katherine Larson
Sign Here: Tracing Spatial and Social Networks of Hellenistic Sculptors

4.35-4.45 Break

4.45-5.30 Discussion (and wine reception)