Evaluating Structural Change in Neolithic Economies: Social Network Analysis of Utilitarian Pottery Exchange in the Jianghan Plain

Author(s): Camilla Sturm

Year: 2017

Summary

The emergence of walled town settlements of the late Neolithic middle Yangzi River region are widely associated with the development of a complex form of social organization. While significant attention has focused on the structure and organization of individual walled settlements, little is known about the nature of social and economic interactions between communities. To address this issue, I combined geochemical analysis of pottery with formal social network methods to investigate changes in utilitarian economic networks across a 1,500 year period. These economic networks were traced between the neighborhoods of two Neolithic walled settlements, Taojiahu and Xiaocheng, over a 56 km2 region during the Qujialing (c. 3300-2600 BCE) and Shijiahe (c. 2600-1900 BCE) periods. Preliminary findings indicate that networks were less centralized and better integrated in the Shijiahe than in the Quijialing period, suggesting that economic interactions between these communities became less regulated through time.

Cite this Record

Evaluating Structural Change in Neolithic Economies: Social Network Analysis of Utilitarian Pottery Exchange in the Jianghan Plain. Camilla Sturm. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 430964)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: 66.885; min lat: -8.928 ; max long: 147.568; max lat: 54.059 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14387