Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Within the last 25 years, archaeologists have begun to use powerful computers and sophisticated statistical algorithms to identify network structures in archaeological data. This network analysis enables us to better study human interactions and the diffusion of information and cultural traditions from the scale of individuals to whole societies. Network analysis also allows archaeologists to infer the strength and direction of relationships among nodes (e.g., individuals or social units) and ties (e.g., kinship or shared identities) at multiple scales. Measures of centrality permit the identification of nodes that exert a strong influence on the structure of a network, often leading archaeologists to interpret such nodes as individuals or geographical centers of prestige, information, goods, and/or power. Researchers’ approaches to selecting archaeologically visible behavior for study, abstracting those data into formal network concepts, and transforming the archaeological data into network data varies greatly. This symposium illustrates diverse archaeological uses of network analysis and demonstrates the sophisticated interpretations of human behavior that such an approach can facilitate.

Other Keywords
Digital Archaeology: Simulation and Modeling • Theory • Modeling • Mobility • Quantitative Analysis • Human Behavioral Ecology • Ceramic Analysis • Settlement patterns • Household Archaeology • Historic

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • Belize (Country) • Republic of Peru (Country) • Republic of Panama (Country) • Republic of Colombia (Country) • Netherlands Antilles (Country) • Aruba (Country) • Republic of Ecuador (Country) • Republic of Chile (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Archaeology, History, and Modeling the Past: Neglected Assumptions (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Terrell.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For archaeologists, finding something from the past is more than its own reward. When what they have “recovered” can be interpreted as playing plausible roles in convincing historical narratives, they have reason to believe they are doing something extraordinary: fleshing out our ignorance of history with factual evidence of what may have...

  • From Pukaras to Polities: Exploring Late Prehispanic Andean Hillforts through Large Scale Network Analysis (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Kohut. Ryan Smith. Romuald Housse. Elizabeth Arkush. Steven Wernke.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper employs network analysis to explore the sociopolitical dynamics of the late prehispanic south-central Andes through the lens of 1,400 hilltop fortifications. Hilltop fortifications in the Andean highlands, known as pukaras, are emblematic of the Late Intermediate period (1000–1450 CE) and Late Horizon (1450–1532 CE). Focusing on...

  • Network Analysis in the Tairona Chiefdoms: Settlement Patterns and Social interaction in the El Congo Microbasin, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Soto Rodriguez.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to present the results of network analysis for the case of the chiefdom communities that inhabited the northwestern slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from AD 400 to 1600 in the El Congo microbasin. Through the use of statistical algorithms in R language and databases in geographic information systems, this paper...

  • Network Analysis of Magdalenian (Upper Paleolithic) Perforated Disks (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Schwendler. Charles Egeland. Jing Deng. Minjeong Kim. Christopher Nicholson.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Magdalenian (ca. 20,000 to 14,000 cal BP) of western and central Europe witnessed both a rapid expansion of Upper Paleolithic human populations after the Last Glacial Maximum and the creation and circulation of an unprecedented abundance and diversity of portable decorated items. The materials, design details, and chrono-spatial...

  • Networking Households, Building a Nation: Investigating the Social Organization of Eighteenth-Century Yamasee Towns in South Carolina (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Hoover.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of social network analysis to archaeological research in the US Southeast has largely focused on interregional mobility and exchange. In this paper, I instead explore how small-scale social networks maintained by households shape larger-scale community structures. For several millennia in the US Southeast, households were...

  • Ritual, Politics, and the Structure of Community Networks in Classic Maya Society (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson. Matthew Looper. Jonathan Scholnick.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and performance play important integrative functions in the creation, maintenance, and negotiation of social ties that bind communities together. The shared experience of these public displays establishes strong bonds between individuals, defining their membership in certain social groups while reinforcing cultural norms and values....

  • The Socio-Ecological Determinants of Community Centers (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Vernon. Scott Ortman.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Community centers often play a dual role in archaeological contexts, as a civic space where individuals can participate in shared rituals and exchange and as a residential space connecting a large number of unrelated households. Given that these two roles are not perfectly coincident with each other, it is interesting to consider why...

  • Using Agent-Based Models to Explore How Behavior Affects Archaeological Networks (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias. Robert Bischoff.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists use a wide variety of material culture and methods to construct and analyze networks. Just how these networks relate to past behavior is an open question, as we lack information on the relationship between behavior and material culture in the past. We do not have adequate datasets of people interacting with people alongside...