Modeling small world networks in the Cyclades (Greece)

Summary

This paper explores how community interaction can be modeled on a local scale using the Early Bronze Age Cyclades (Greece) as a case study. Small worlds—the local, intensive networks of interaction among communities in the Aegean islands—sustained essential ties among small communities that had limited subsistence and few labor resources (Tartaron 2008: 109). By combining material evidence for exchange and ritual deposition, environmental data, and cost-surface analyses of travel time and distance into GIS, this paper defines one small world in the central Cyclades and seeks to explain the reasons behind its development and cohesion. As opposed to most network analyses which describe centralization, a small worlds model of community interaction recognizes that often the most marginal areas of human habitation require the most intense and long-lived community ties to ensure their survival (Horden and Purcell 2000). Understanding which communities may have been incorporated into these small worlds and the degree of connectivity between them leads to better archaeological understanding of issues surrounding inter-community interdependence (e.g. agricultural subsistence, surplus production), social interaction (e.g. extended family ties, exogamy, rituals and social gatherings), and material exchange.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

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