Thinking Through Networks: A Review of Formal Network Methods in Archaeology

Brughmans, Tom

doi:10.1007/s10816-012-9133-8

Cited by 256 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 129 publications

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“…The central places of hunter-gatherers were not cities, nor were their lifestyles urbanized through specialized subsistence regimes, the unequal distribution of resources, hierarchical social organization, or dependence on subsistence exchange. Yet central places still played a significant functional role in sedentary huntergatherer societies as the optimal loci of networks of cultural and material exchange (Redman 1999, Hamilton et al 2009, Kaplan et al 2009, Burnside et al 2012, Brughmans 2013, Ortman et al 2014. Long before the rise of cities and urban lifeways, the importance of social networks and centrality in structuring the processes of sociocultural niche construction, cultural and material accumulation and subsistence exchange were established (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978, Cowgill 2004, Hamilton et al 2009, Kaplan et al 2009, Feinman and Garraty 2010, Burnside et al 2012, Brughmans 2013, Ortman et al 2014.…”

Section: Social Upscaling Centrality and Urbanizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

Ellis

2015

Ecological Monographs

473

510

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Abstract. Humans, unlike any other multicellular species in Earth's history, have emerged as a global force that is transforming the ecology of an entire planet. It is no longer possible to understand, predict, or successfully manage ecological pattern, process, or change without understanding why and how humans reshape these over the long term. Here, a general causal theory is presented to explain why human societies gained the capacity to globally alter the patterns, processes, and dynamics of ecology and how these anthropogenic alterations unfold over time and space as societies themselves change over human generational time. Building on existing theories of ecosystem engineering, niche construction, inclusive inheritance, cultural evolution, ultrasociality, and social change, this theory of anthroecological change holds that sociocultural evolution of subsistence regimes based on ecosystem engineering, social specialization, and non-kin exchange, or ''sociocultural niche construction,'' is the main cause of both the long-term upscaling of human societies and their unprecedented transformation of the biosphere. Human sociocultural niche construction can explain, where classic ecological theory cannot, the sustained transformative effects of human societies on biogeography, ecological succession, ecosystem processes, and the ecological patterns and processes of landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere. Anthroecology theory generates empirically testable hypotheses on the forms and trajectories of long-term anthropogenic ecological change that have significant theoretical and practical implications across the subdisciplines of ecology and conservation. Though still at an early stage of development, anthroecology theory aligns with and integrates established theoretical frameworks including social-ecological systems, social metabolism, countryside biogeography, novel ecosystems, and anthromes. The ''fluxes of nature'' are fast becoming ''cultures of nature.'' To investigate, understand, and address the ultimate causes of anthropogenic ecological change, not just the consequences, human sociocultural processes must become as much a part of ecological theory and practice as biological and geophysical processes are now. Strategies for achieving this goal and for advancing ecological science and conservation in an increasingly anthropogenic biosphere are presented.

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Section: Social Upscaling Centrality and Urbanizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

Ellis

2015

Ecological Monographs

473

510

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“…The database we compiled contains information on more than 4.3 million ceramic artifacts from more than 700 archaeological sites and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts from 140 sites in a 334,000 km 2 area of the western Southwest. Formal network analysis has recently become more widely used in archaeology (9), especially as large-scale databases amenable to network approaches such as ours, are being developed. Network analyses emphasize the relationships among nodes (e.g., individuals, households, settlements), rather than the nodal attributes traditionally studied by archaeologists such as status, function, or size.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest

Mills

Clark

Peeples

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

185

107

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The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200-1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western Southwest. We combine social network analysis with geographic information systems approaches to reconstruct network dynamics over 250 y. We show how social networks were transformed across the region at previously undocumented spatial, temporal, and social scales. Using well-dated decorated ceramics, we track changes in network topology at 50-y intervals to show a dramatic shift in network density and settlement centrality from the northern to the southern Southwest after A.D. 1300. Both obsidian sourcing and ceramic data demonstrate that long-distance network relationships also shifted from north to south after migration. Surprisingly, social distance does not always correlate with spatial distance because of the presence of network relationships spanning long geographic distances. Our research shows how a large network in the southern Southwest grew and then collapsed, whereas networks became more fragmented in the northern Southwest but persisted. The study also illustrates how formal social network analysis may be applied to large-scale databases of material culture to illustrate multigenerational changes in network structure.archaeology | North American Southwest | spatial analysis | network visualization | regional interaction

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“…Archaeological network approaches thus require critical reflection and adaptations of the available models and techniques in order to fill the gaps between material representations of human activity with actual people and their actions (Brughmans 2010;Knappett 2011Knappett , 2012Knappett , 2013a. The most important insight is that human interaction and the building of social networks never take place between humans alone, but are fundamentally constituted by material culture.…”

Section: Identity From a Network Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Networks of Meaning and the Social Dynamics of Identity. An Example from Early Anglo-Saxon England

Felder

2022

PIA

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Thinking Through Networks: A Review of Formal Network Methods in Archaeology

Cited by 256 publications

References 129 publications

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest

Networks of Meaning and the Social Dynamics of Identity. An Example from Early Anglo-Saxon England

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