network analysis (Other Keyword)
51-70 (70 Records)
Ceramic assemblages of Postclassic and Colonial Maya sites in highland and coastal Guatemala are dominated by comales: griddle-like cooking vessels indicative of a maize tortilla diet. Given that some archaeologists have interpreted the appearance of the nixtamal/tortilla/comal complex in Guatemala as evidence of the "Mexicanization" of the Maya region, the Pacific coastal region of Guatemala -and its Central Mexican diasporic populations- is seen as the likely source of comales. As a result,...
A Probabilistic Approach to Constructing Networks in the Kuril Islands (2018)
One of the persisting challenges in archaeological network analysis is how to incorporate both temporal and spatial information into network models generated from the archaeological record. This paper tackles this issue by introducing a protocol that places probabilistic weights on potential network connections between archaeological sites, combining time-varying probabilities quantifying contemporaneous site occupation and space-dependent probabilities based on geographic distance. The...
Reconfiguring Social Networks: The Emergence of Social Complexity Before and After Urbanism on Cyprus (2018)
Despite the lack of cities, the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus (2400-1700 cal BC), an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, witnesses high wealth inequality and spatiotemporal variation in the emergence of social complexity or hierarchical social networks. Previous research has shown that social networks are malleable and cycle between egalitarian and hierarchical in different facets of complexity (control of labor, access to resources, participation in trade networks) through the Prehistoric...
Reconstructing and Testing Ancient Neighborhoods at Caracol, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neighborhoods in the past formed in urban contexts from the bottom-up through repeated face-to-face interactions. Through these shared social experiences and relational identity, neighborhood groups would possess a high potential for collective action, facilitating local solutions to issues facing...
Reconstructing Social Networks: Using 3D Scans to Infer Networks of Shared Manufacture Knowledge in Late Bronze Age Central Europe (2017)
This project is a case study using 3D scans of Late Bronze Age swords (~1200-800BC) to recreate community networks of knowledge. Measurements from 111 3D scans of bronze sword hilts were taken based on characteristics related to manufacture and style, including cross sections. Fourier analysis was used to represent the curvature of cross sections numerically. The measurements taken and the results of the Fourier analyses were then processed using principal component analysis to combine related...
Reinventing by the Wheel: Ceramic Networks and New Approaches to the Study of Political Economies (2017)
This paper explores the value of network analysis as a method for the quantitative assessment of trade systems with the aim of profiling the structural nature of their associated political institutions. This study will focus on trade in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1700 to 1200 BCE), and includes a network analysis of Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery circulated throughout Egypt, Cyprus, and the Levant. The analysis of ceramic distribution networks demonstrates a high...
The Risks and Rewards of Network Position in the Chaco World (2018)
In a previous study Peeples and Haas (2013) compared brokerage (intermediate) positions in networks of ceramic similarity to measures of settlement growth and longevity for the late pre-Hispanic western U.S. Southwest (A.D. 1200-1500). Counter to expectations from many contemporary network studies where brokerage positions are associated with long-term advantage, this work instead suggested that broker settlements tended to be small, short-lived, and that brokerage was temporary. This example...
A Social Network Exploration of Models of Social Space and Community Organization at Moundville (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Moundville is one of the largest Mississippian sites in North America consisting of at least 29 earthen mounds positioned around an open plaza. Numerous researchers have remarked on the regularized spatial layout of the site, arguing that the formal arrangement of the mounds and plaza reflect social...
Social Networks and Community Features: Identifying Neighborhoods in a World War II Japanese American Incarceration Center (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Socially defined neighborhoods develop through frequent face-to-face interactions among residents and their self-identification as neighbors. Archaeological evidence of neighborhoods is usually dependent on artifact frequencies, boundaries, or shared features. This paper explores how effectively...
Solutions to Drift on Small and Isolated Populations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Due to the effects of drift on small and isolated populations, island environments pose particular evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences particularly when environmental conditions change in an unpredictable fashion:...
Spatial Analysis and Community Organization at Iglesia Gentil (San Pedro Teozacoalco), Oaxaca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2013 and 2017, archaeologists used GPS units to map Iglesia Gentil, a prehispanic mountaintop site in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico. In addition to thousands of agricultural and residential terraces, more than 750 structures were recorded along with ancient roads, platforms, patios, and surface artifacts. In this paper,...
The State of Andean Obsidian Artifact Provenance: A Social Network Analysis (SNA) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian was both a common domestic good and a highly sought-after exotic material imbued with ideological significance in the past. In the south-central Andes of Peru and Bolivia, obsidian procurement and distribution greatly expanded during the Middle Horizon (CE 600–1000),...
The Strength of Deep Ties: Obsidian Provenance Suggests Long-Distance Cooperation over Six Millennia in Numu Territory (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have suggested that economies of scale gained from cooperative hunting fueled the evolution of human sociality. This model anticipates inflated levels of cooperation during group-hunting events in comparison to other contexts. To evaluate this prediction, we examine the provenance of 395 obsidian projectile points from the large communal hunting...
Taught or Copied? Using 2-Mode Network Visualization to Distinguish between the Two (2018)
Traditional research on European Upper Paleolithic social networks rely on raw material sourcing as well as the distribution of similar "artistic" styles. This project aims to improve the methods of the latter. While similar representations found in different sites have often been assumed to represent the presence of social contacts between those sites, the possibility that such representations were exchanged or even simply copied without direct contact has always loomed over researchers’ head....
Toward an Epidemiological Model of Sarcoptic Mange among Andean Camelids (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sarcoptic mange is a highly infectious, zoonotic disease endemic to modern Andean camelid populations. Severe infection can result in the loss of wool and death of the animal. Rapid spread can lead to significant economic losses and population instability. Despite widespread awareness and preventative measures taken by modern camelid...
Twenty Years of Mesoamerican Obsidian Research at the EAF (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the first materials compositionally analyzed at the EAF were obsidian objects from the Maya site of San José, Belize. Since then, we have analyzed tens of thousands of obsidian objects from Mesoamerica (primarily from the Valley of Oaxaca) as part of our study of the...
Understanding Multi-sited Woodland Communities of the American Southeast through Categorical Identities and Relational Connections (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While communities are often considered to be isomorphic with settlements, this equivalency is ill-suited to understanding contexts in which the structure of settlement and social organization was cyclical and nested at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In the coastal plain of the American...
Using Quantitative Methods to Assess Network Change in Coupled Human/Natural Systems (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of the dynamics and stability of human systems cannot be uncoupled from their environmental and ecological contexts. Archaeological knowledge can deeply inform, enhance and transform our understanding of socio-ecological dynamics and sustainability, if we can only quantitatively assess these interactions. One...
What Do Archaeological Networks Reveal? Comparing New Guinean Material Culture with Ethnographic Network Structure (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Network analysis has become increasingly common within archaeological practice during the last decade, yet little consensus exists as to what networks based on material culture actually reveal about ancient social life. Archaeologists have variably interpreted communities or cliques derived from...
Yucatec and Gulf Coast Influences in Terminal Classic Western Belize: Examining the Evidence and Processes for Change (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations in western Belize have recorded a growing body of evidence that is indicative of non-central lowland Maya influences in this Maya subregion during the Terminal Classic period. Evidence for Yucatec and non-Maya influence in the...