Session: The Challenge of telling a Network Story in Archaeology

Once upon a time, several communities lived together in a certain place. They lacked modern entities such as computers, stock markets, healthcare, and peer-reviewed journals, as well as simple technologies like masonry, metalwork or even the wheel. In many ways their lives were very different from ours, yet in some respects they were very similar: they traded for goods, competed for resources, had memes that diffused rapidly among them, travelled large distances to see their friends, while trying to stay away from their enemies, and so forth.

Time flies, and today only a few traces of their past lives remain. These take the form of non-perishable material remains that are literally covered by the sands of time. Tools, ornaments, raw materials and other objects used by these communities lie below the surface, waiting to be uncovered by archaeologists who study them to find out what happened once upon a time.  This is where the challenge starts. In archaeology spurious data provide us with a few scattered relational observations that can be analyzed using any (new/old) network methods. In this way new pages in the history books can be written through network science.

This session invites original contributions telling a story based on archaeological relational observations.

To this end, a sample data-set is provided to session participants. Please  download data here, explanations to the data set are provided here.

The only requirement is being creative and coming up with a story that is coherent and well-argued for (i.e no archaeological experience needed; your contribution does not have to be archaeologically sound). If you would like to tell us your tale or want to know more about the session and its challenge, please feel free to contact us.

At the end of the session the most creative entry will be awarded an archaeological-trophy!
Go to Sunbelt2015 website

“Our colleagues Tom Brughmans and Termeh Shafie (U Konstanz) are organising a supplemental session entitled “Challenges in Archaeological Network Science” where researchers are invited to present work done on any methodological challenges that network scientists in archaeology are faced with”.