People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological applications of social network analysis (SNA) inherently have a strong spatial component. Material culture exists in space, and the identification and distribution of these materials facilitates the creation of spatially located networks. Archaeology can contribute to the broader field of SNA through the creation and application of spatial SNA methods. Conversely, SNA may also be a powerful tool in the identification or reconstruction of neighborhoods and communities in the past through its ability to identify linked groups. This intersection means that SNA can provide powerful techniques to help archaeologists determine the presence and extent of different communities, as well as assess interactions within and among those communities. SNA can draw on artifact exchange systems, methods of production, or documentary sources to identify links between different nodes in networks of interaction. These data can then be used to reconstruct social networks. This session presents several papers from multiple regions focused around the application of SNA to identify discrete communities or neighborhoods. Interest in SNA as a tool to interpret archaeological evidence has been increasing dramatically, as has interest in identifying communities and neighborhoods. This application of SNA research is an open avenue of applicable research with potential utilization beyond archaeology.

Other Keywords
network analysis • Ceramic Analysis • Maya: Classic • Digital Archaeology: GIS • Survey • Woodland • Historic • Mississippian • Neighborhoods • digital archaeology

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • United Mexican States (Country) • Belize (Country) • USA (Country) • Delaware (State / Territory) • Georgia (State / Territory) • Mississippi (State / Territory) • Peten (State / Territory) • Tennessee (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)

  • Documents (7)
Documents
  • Living on the Edge: Alternative Network Models for Socio-spatial Analysis in Archaeology (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson.

    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. Recent studies using network analysis in archaeology seek to understand the interactions and structures that defined past societies. Such approaches are based on graph theoretic models that are simplifications of reality used to conceptualize and describe relationships, either qualitatively or...

  • Networks, Community Detection, and Critical Scales of Interaction in the U.S. Southwest/Mexican Northwest (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt Peeples.

    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. Archaeologists have long recognized that spatial relationships are an important influence on and driver of all manner of social processes at scales from the local to the continental or even beyond. Recent research in the realm of complex networks focused on community detection in human networks...

  • Reconstructing and Testing Ancient Neighborhoods at Caracol, Belize (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase.

    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...

  • A Social Network Exploration of Models of Social Space and Community Organization at Moundville (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Smith. Elliot Blair.

    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)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only April Kamp-Whittaker.

    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...

  • Understanding Multi-sited Woodland Communities of the American Southeast through Categorical Identities and Relational Connections (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Neill Wallis. Thomas Pluckhahn.

    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...

  • What Do Archaeological Networks Reveal? Comparing New Guinean Material Culture with Ethnographic Network Structure (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Golitko.

    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...