Archaeological Networks and Social Interaction

Lieve Donnellan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138545205
• eBook ISBN: 9781351003049
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Archaeological Networks and Social Interaction focuses on conceptualisations of human interaction, human-thing entanglement, material affordances and agency.

Network concepts in the archaeological discipline are ubiquitous these days. They range from loose concepts, used as metaphors to address a notion of connectivity, to highly formal and mathematically complex predictions of human behaviour. These different networked worlds sometimes clash and rarely converge. Archaeologists interested in network analysis, however, have achieved a much better understanding of the implications of adopting formal methods for studying social interaction and there have been theoretical advancements realising a better synergy between different theoretical perspectives. These nascent concerns are explored further in this volume with regional specialists exploring case studies from Prehistory to the Middle Ages throughout the Ancient and New Worlds, outlining how formal network approaches contribute to studying social interaction archaeologically.

This book will be of interest to archaeologists wishing to access the latest research on networks and interconnectivity and how these approaches have been productively modified to archaeological research.

1Archaeological networks and social interaction

Lieve Donnellan

Networks in archaeology

Network concepts in the archaeological discipline are ubiquitous these days. They range from loose concepts, used as metaphors to address a notion of land-based or marine connectivity (e.g. Horden and Purcell 2000; Broodbank 2013; Malkin 2003, 2011; Vlassopoulos 2003, etc.) to highly formal, mathematically complex predictions of human behaviour (e.g. Verhagen et al. 2013; Rivers et al. 2013; Brughmans et al. 2015, etc.). In addition, the network concept has started to figure in a parallel world, completely alien to the formal network approaches and contradictory to some of its basic principles, as contrivance to describe the entanglement between humans and the material world (e.g. Knappett 2005; Ingold 2010a, 2010b; Hodder 2012; Gosden 2012; Malafouris 2013, etc.). These different networked worlds sometimes clash (e.g. Van Oyen 2016, 2017) and rarely converge (Knappett 2011; Hodder and Mol 2016).

One of the main divisive factors between these different approaches is a profound disagreement on the location and nature of social interaction and agency. The idea of material agency in archaeology has spiked since the landmark publication of Hodder (1982) that announced the postprocessual paradigm and the concept of human agency in archaeology came at the centre of theoretical debates since the systematic treatment in an edited volume by Dobres and Rob (2000b). Archaeologists have come to recognise the centrality of the material world in the (re)production of social life (e.g. Ingold 1996, 2010a, 2010b, 2018; Dobres and Robb 2000a; Preucel and Meskell 2004a; Knappett 2005, 2011; Hodder 2012; Malafouris 2013). But somehow, these theoretical advances were not picked up by the emerging subfield of archaeological network analysis. Formal network applications in archaeology are often seen as completely neglecting human agency let alone material agency (e.g. Knappett 2011; Van Oyen 2016, 2017). However, even some materiality theories have come under scrutiny for neglecting the fluidity in the process of production of reality (Ingold 2011). Purposely ignoring agency or not, there is almost a consensus today that network analysis in archaeology affects the spatial world and nothing else. For example, Barthelemey (2014, 10) states that ‘It is important to realize here that when dealing with social networks, we are in fact usually working on a particular type of spatial network’. Along similar lines, Prignano, Morer and Diaz-Guolhera (2017), in their discussion of the material similarities that act as proxy for social interaction in the past, propose ‘We can thus state that ASN (Archaeological Social Networks) are spatial networks derived as the onemode version (projection) of weighted bipartite networks’. In an influential paper, Collar et al. (2015, 12–13) point out that ‘A very common approach … is to use sites as nodes. Sites form natural nodes because of their relative boundedness, discreteness, and stability and persistence over archaeologically observable timescales …’.

The ‘social’ in archaeological applications of social network analysis seems virtually absent. As Carl Knappett (2014, 179) notes in his commentary on a new volume on Social Network Perspectives in Archaeology (Evans and Felder 2014), ‘the irony of this volume being named ‘social network perspectives in archaeology’ is that archaeologists very rarely get to see social networks’. Indeed, also elsewhere, archaeologists confess to struggle with adding a social dimension to the application of network analysis. For example Justin Leidwanger and colleagues (Leidwanger et al. 2014, 2) state ‘Even if we all recognise that our ultimate goal is the explanation of social phenomena in a broad sense, this objective can nonetheless become difficult to attain if always negotiated and visualised purely via spatial distributions’. The inability of archaeological network analysis to address social interaction and social change at a level below the regional scale or site, or at least discuss how scalar interdependence evokes change, probably explains why the authoritative volume on social archaeology by Preucel and Meskell (2004b) does not even refer to network analysis as a method or concept to study social interaction archaeologically.

The last couple of years, however, archaeologists interested in network analysis have achieved a much better understanding of the implications of adopting formal methods and there have been theoretical advancements as to realise a better synergy between different theoretical concerns. A step forward has been the artificial albeit analytically useful distinction between scales which helps to locate patterns in the archaeological record and juxtapose them with other heuristic devices to address agency. These nascent concerns, explored further in this volume, focus on conceptualisations of human interaction, human-thing entanglement and material affordances and agency.

In order to guide the reader through the specific theoretical and methodological difficulties that the contributions in this volume seek to address, the remainder of this chapter explores the challenges posed by the heuristic tool of the scalar mode of enquiry of interaction. The challenges of a scalar mode of interaction are discussed in archaeological network analysis (Knappett 2011; Leidwanger et al. 2014; Donnellan 2016) as much as in studies of human (Dobbres and Robb 2000a) and material agency (Hodder 1982). The next section of this chapter outlines the origin of the spatial interest of the vast majority of archaeological network analysis today. The network concept is deeply rooted in spatial metaphors and the earliest archaeologists using network analysis drew on this long tradition rather than emerging sociological ones. Subsequently, the often-mistaken notion that formal social network analysis is necessarily structural in nature is scrutinised. It outlines how in the early days of sociological network analysis, practice and agency were at the heart of the enquiry, rather than the formal structural and mathematical approaches with which we associate social network analysis today. In the third section, the particular aims and achievements of the contributions in this volume are discussed. Acknowledging challenges and issues related to the fluidity of the production of social reality, scalar interdependence and the role of physical space and the material world, the contributors discuss the use of certain visual representations and formal methods to describe the role of the material world in negotiating social interactions.

The spatial focus

An important reason for the primordial role allocated to space in archaeological research is no doubt the nature of archaeological data. Even when we are not sure how to date an object or building, we usually know where it was found – at least if we are not dealing with looted material. Conolly and Lake (2006, 234) in their handbook on Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology, point out that ‘the bulk of archaeological data is ultimately point based’. The very practice of excavating or collecting material from the surface results in ‘physical spatial location’ being a primary quality allocated to our finds, at least since nineteenth-century archaeologists started paying attention to the location of their finds. With the rise of positivism and processual approaches in the archaeological discipline in the 1960s and 1970s, the interest in space all but intensified and it was not until much more recently that social interaction and the active manipulation of culture came to be scrutinised (Hodder 1982, 2004; Jones 1997; Preucel and Meskell 2004b; Knappett 2005, 2011, 2013). Building on a long tradition that stretches back to Heidegger (1927) and the school of phenomenological philosophy, space is now considered to be a social construct that shapes and is reshaped by social interaction (Lefebre 1991; Soja 1989, 1996; Ingold 1993; Tilley 1994; Blake 2004; Preucel and Meskell 2004a).

From the very beginning, the use of the word ‘networks’ was tightly intertwined with spatial metaphors. The very origins of the word have been traced both in French and English to the description of tightly-knit fabrics before the twelfth century (Addison 1721, 390; Parrochia 1993, 5, 2005). It is thought that the ancient Greeks did not have a concept of ‘network’ or ‘connectivity’ as spatial metaphor, but the use of ἐκ τῶν ἐπηλλαγμένων, derived from ‘something intertwined or closely connected’ to describe an intertwined series of tracks in Xenophon’s essay On hunting (6.14) seems to point to the contrary. The Roman reticulum (net) or opus reticulatum (a building style involving regularly placed bricks as to shape a regular pattern of intersections between the bricks) indicate that the metaphor existed certainly in the Roman world. In early modern times, the concept of réseau or net-work gradually came to be seen as a suitable metaphor for describing various new ideas of complex intertwined entities, going from transportation systems such as rivers, roads and railroads to natural phenomena such as crystals and blood vessels (Parrocchia 2005). As such, the close connection between spatial proximity, or at least a physical link between entities became intrinsically linked with the idea of ‘networks’.

Similarly, the mathematical description of networks was born from a spatial conceptualisation. In the earlier part of the eighteenth century, one of the most important mathematicians of the time, Swiss-born Leonard Euler, tackled a trivial pursuit of the bourgeoisie in a small Prussian town, Köningsberg, now Kaliningrad in Russia (Newman et al. 2006, 1–2). The Köningsbergians would attempt to make their walks through town, crossing all of the seven bridges that the town counted, only once. Euler constructed a visual representation of the question and proved that such was not possible. With his game, he laid the basis of what we now recognise as the visual representation of networks or, scientifically speaking, graph theory (Biggs et al. 1979).

The invention of the sociogram, the characteristic way to depict a specifically social network as dots connected by lines, was, however, not spatial in nature at all. In fact, there seems to have been no connection between the mathematical developments and the invention of graphs to depict social networks. Its invention is usually attributed to the American psychologist Jacopo Moreno in a work from 1934 (Moreno 1934). Moreno himself, however, describes the development of the sociogram as a process that started as early as 1923, when he developed a method to chart spontaneous interaction, ‘Stegreifnoten’ or ‘spontaneous interaction diagrams’ (Moreno 1923, 1953, 140). Throughout the years, he developed his charts further to encompass more forms of human interaction (Moreno 1953, 140). Moreno eventually applied the methods to study how mass hysterics spread in a reform school in New York – the work that is now, incorrectly, considered the start of the visual representation of networks (Freeman 2004). An important theoretical foundation of networks as a unit of analysis is clearly formulated in Moreno’s work. Rather than seeing individuals independently from each other, he focused on the dynamics as a group and the specific place of individuals within this group. This idea was close to the foundations of the important twentieth-century sociologist Simmel’s theory, which is considered another important theoretical foundation of social network theory (Freeman 2004; Marin and Wellmann 2011). Moreno, in line with contemporary sociologists, claimed that individuals’ behaviour could be explained by the place the subject occupies within his/her social network and society as a whole. Important to observe, however, is that spatial proximity was for Moreno and his associates still the first step in drawing a subject’s social circle (Moreno 1953, 98).

Despite the common attribution of Moreno as inventor of the sociogram, he was not the first to develop a graphic application in order to study human relations. The visual representation of ‘networks’ was used in late nineteenth-century Russia already, where the secret police (the Ochrana) would use visual representations to document groups of anarchists and other adepts of philosophies considered a danger to the establishment – very much like terrorist cells or other groups are mapped today (Laporte 1935, 39–40; Ruud and Stepanov 1999, 69–70). Suspects would be depicted in circles and the lines between them represented their connections. The larger the circle and the lines, the more frequent the interaction and the more important the node to the network. In a way, even medieval depictions of family trees can be seen as a precursor, as well as early anthropologists’ studies on kinship ties (Freeman 2004). These depictions and studies are not formally recognised as formative in network theory, but they indicate that visualisations of networks were more commonly known than is usually recognised. Another interesting element is that among these early popular networks, space was not considered to be an important factor.

More than one archaeologist has expressed astonishment about the fact that archaeologists did not really pick up on the concept of social networks or the possibility to visualise interactions between entities (Knappett 2011, 2013; Brughmans 2013). Previous research has pointed out that the network pioneers were processual archaeologists who turned to the fields of geography and formal methods to study physical space (Knappett 2011, 2013, Brughmans 2013). A paper by the historical geographer, Forrest Pitts (1965) is usually cited as the initial impetus for graph theoretical approaches in archaeology. Pitts studied the Russian river system to trace the centrality of Moscow and explain the city’s rise within the fluvial system. Pitts’ approach was adopted, with mixed success, to study questions such as the road system in Roman Br...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Archaeological networks and social interaction
• 2 Relational concepts and challenges to network analysis in social archaeology
• 3 Entangled identities: Processes of status construction in late Urnfield burials
• 4 Distributed feasts: Reciprocity, hospitality and banquets in Iron Age to Orientalising central and southern Italy
• 5 Marble networks: Social interaction in houses at Pompeii
• 6 Objects that bind, objects that separate
• 7 A complex beadwork: Bead trade and trade beads in Scandinavia ca. 800–1000 AD revisited
• 8 Social network analysis and the social interactions that define Hopewell
• 9 Terrestrial communication networks and political agency in Early Iron Age Central Italy (950–500 BCE): A bottom-up approach
• Index