In other news, the first plenary speaker for CAA2012 is announced: Dr Jeremy Huggett (University of Glasgow) with a talk entitled “Disciplinary issues: the research and practice of computer applications in archaeology”

CAA has been meeting annually for almost forty years, so one might expect that we would have a reasonable idea of the nature and role of archaeological computing. However, some see it as an emerging field (e.g. Bimber & Chang 2011) while others suggest the need for a new archaeological speciality: Archaeological Information Science (e.g. Llobera 2011). Even the Wikipedia page on computational archaeology describes archaeoinformatics as an emerging discipline. Is this a sign of a lack of confidence in forty years-worth of enterprise and development or is it instead an indication of growing self-assurance in the subject? In recent years other fields, including GIScience and Information Systems, have sought to evaluate their intellectual core and identity; perhaps it is time that archaeological computing does likewise.

The CAA2012 registration system is now open:

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/caa2012/registration/index.html

The early bird registration rates will end on 1 February. We very much look forward to seeing you in Southampton in March.

As part of the registration process we would very much like you to provide us with your social media profiles e.g. twitter, linkedin, academia etc. If you agree we will place these on the CAA2012 website in order to create an online community in advance of the conference and to help interactions during and after it. Please also follow @caasoton if you are a twitter user for regular updates.

The event will take place 24-25 March 2012 at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Southampton (UK). This is the two days before and at the same venue as the Computer Applications and Quantitative Techniques in Archaeology conference (CAA2012). We are delighted with the great response to our call for papers by scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, mathematics, physics, computer science and classics. The range of topics is equally diverse, but all contributors and keynotes (Carl Knappett, Irad Malkin and Alex Bentley) promise to make original contributions to the use of networks and complexity in archaeology and history. The full list of accepted papers and posters is now available online and below.

We are looking forward to seeing you at The Connected Past!

Tom Brughmans, Anna Collar and Fiona Coward
http://connectedpast.soton.ac.uk/

Confirmed presentations:

Carl Knappett – keynote (University of Toronto)
“Networks of Objects, Meshworks of Things”

Irad Malkin – keynote (Tel Aviv University)
“The Spatial Turn, Network Theory, and the Archaic Greek World”

Alex Bentley – keynote (University of Bristol)
“Networks, complexity and the archaeology of complex social systems”

Craig Alexander (University of Cambridge)
“Networks and intervisibility: a study of Iron Age Valcamonica”

Juan A. Barceló et al. (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)
“Simulating the Emergence of Social Networks of Restricted Cooperation in Prehistory. A Bayesian network approach”

Andrew Bevan (University College London)
“When nodes and edges dissolve. Incorporating geographic uncertainty into the analysis of settlement interactions”

Tom Brughmans (Archaeological Computing Research Group, University of Southampton)

Marco Büchler (Leipzig eHumanities Research Group)
“Generation of Text Graphs and Text Re-use Graphs from Massive Digital Data”

Mark Depauw and Bart Van Beek (K.U. Leuven)
“Authority and Social Interaction in Graeco‐Roman Egypt”

Marten Düring (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen)
“How reliable are centrality and clustering measures for data collected from fragmentary and heterogenuous historical sources? A case study”

Tim Evans (Imperial College London)
“Which Network Model Should I Use? A Quantitative Comparison of Spatial Network Models in Archaeology”

Evi Gorogianni (University of Akron)
“Marrying out: a consideration of cultural exogamy and its implications on material culture”

Eivind Heldaas Seland (University of Bergen)
“Travel and religion in late antiquity”

Elena Isayev (University of Exeter)
“Edging beyond the shore: Questioning Polybius’s view of Rome and Italy at the dawn of the ‘global moment’ of the 2nd century BC”

Anne Kandler and Fabio Caccioli (Santa Fe Institute)
“The effects of network structure on cultural change”

Katherine Larson (University of Michigan)
“Sign Here: Tracing Spatial and Social Networks of Hellenistic Sculptors”

Claire Lemercier and Paul-André Rosental (CNRS and Sciences-Po, Paris)
“Networks in time and space. The structure and dynamics of migration in 19th-century Northern France”

Qiming Lv et al. (University of Sheffield)
“Network-based spatial-temporal modelling of the first arrival of prehistoric agriculture”

Herbert Maschner et al. (Idaho State University, Idaho Museum of Natural History, Santa Fe Institute, Stanford University, Sandhill Institute)
“Food-webs as network tools for investigating historic and prehistoric roles of humans as consumers in marine ecosystems”

Barbara Mills et al. (University of Arizona)
“Dynamic Network Analysis: Stability and Collapse in U.S. Southwest, A.D. 1200-1500″

Ekaterini Mitsiou (Institute for Byzantine Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
“Networks of state building: State collapses and aristocratic networks in the 13th century Eastern Mediterranean”

Angus Mol and Corinne Hofman (Leiden University)
“Networks Set in Stone: Lithic production and exchange in the early prehistoric northeastern Caribbean”

Johannes Preiser-Kappeller (Institute for Byzantine Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
“Luhmann in Byzantium. A systems theory approach for historical network analysis”

Alessandro Quercia and Lin Foxhall (University of Leicester)
“Weaving networks in pre-Roman South Italy. Using loom weight data to understand complex relationships and social identities”

Ray Rivers (Imperial College London)
“‪Can we always get what we want?”

Wilko Schroeter (University of Vienna)
“The social marriage network of Europe’s ruling families from 1600-1900″

Søren Sindbæk (University of York)
“Contextual network synthesis: Reading communication in archaeology”

Amara Thornton (University College London)
“Reconstructing Networks in the History of Archaeology”

Astrid Van Oyen (University of Cambridge)
“Actors as networks? How to make Actor-Network-Theory work for archaeology: on the reality of categories in the production of Roman terra sigillata”

Confirmed posters:

Craig Alexander and Alberto Marretta (University of Cambridge, Centro Ricerche Antropologiche Alpi Centrali)
“Network analysis of “complex topographic” images in Valcamonica (Lombardy), Italy”

Kimberley van den Berg (VU University Amsterdam)
“Good to Think With: exploring the potential of networks as a concept metaphor or intellectual tool”

Sarah Craft (Brown University)
“Networks on the Ground: Travel Infrastructure and Early Christian Pilgrimage”

Marta Fanello (University of Leicester)
“Prismatic networks: interaction clues in Late Iron Age Britain”

Ioanna Galanaki (British School at Athens)
“Social change and inter/intra-group connectivity: the example of the Middle Bronze Age communities in Mainland Greece”

Aaron Greener

Stefan Jaenicke (Leipzig eHumanities Research Group)
“Europeana4D – Visualizing and exploring geospatio-temporal data”

Asuman Laetzer-Lasar (University of Cologne)
“Network of Hellenistic Ephesos under Roman Rule – the ceramic evidence”

Frank Prendergast (Dublin Institute of Technology and University College Dublin)

Giulia Saltini Semerari (Royal Netherlands Institute at Rome)
“A feedback loop: the socioeconomic causes of the Orientalising revolution”

Keith Scholes (University of York)
“Building Early Medieval Networks: Sources and Construction”

Bastian Still (University College London)
“Wife-givers and Wife-takers: Marriage networks in Babylonia”

Monday 26th March – workshops 10am-3pm; plenary session 3pm-6pm; conference opening reception in Southampton Old Town

Tuesday 27th March – sessions 9:00am-6:30pm. National chapter meetings 6:30-7:30pm. Drinks receptions.

Wednesday 28th March – sessions 9:00am-6:15pm. CAA Committee meeting at lunchtime. CAA AGM 6:15-7:15pm. Followed by the Conference Dinner at Highfield Campus 7:15pm until 1:30am.

Thursday 29th March – sessions 9:00am-6:15pm.

Friday 30th March – conference trips.

I just uploaded the slides of my own presentation. You can find a link to download them on my bibliography page. Alternatively, have a look at my Academia or Scribd pages.

See the call for papers below:

Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks
— 3rd Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci2012

taking place on Tuesday, June 19, 2012
at Northwestern University in Evanston/IL,
near Chicago/IL on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Abstract:
We are pleased to announce the third Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci2012 on Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks. The aim of the symposium is to foster cross-disciplinary research on complex systems within or with the help of arts and humanities.

The symposium will highlight arts and humanities as an interesting source of data, where the combined experience of arts, humanities research, and natural science makes a huge difference in overcoming the limitations of artificially segregated communities of practice. Furthermore, the symposium will focus on striking examples, where artists and humanities researchers make an impact within the natural sciences. By bringing together network scientists and specialists from the arts and humanities we strive for a better understanding of networks and their visualizations in general.

The overall mission is to bring together pioneer work, leveraging previously unused potential by developing the right questions, methods, and tools, as well as dealing with problems of information accuracy and incompleteness. Running parallel to the NetSci2012 conference, the symposium will also provide a unique opportunity to mingle with leading researchers and practitioners of complex network science, potentially sparking fruitful collaborations.

In addition to keynotes and interdisciplinary discussion, we are looking for a number of contributed talks. Selected papers will be published in print in a Special Section of Leonardo Journal (MIT Press), as well as online in Leonardo Transactions.

For previous edition papers and video presentations please visit the following URLs:
* 2010 URL
* 2011 URL

It has been a crazy day at CAA2012 HQ. We are now approaching 300 submissions for the conference, with an amazing range of topics. So, thank you VERY much for your submissions.

We have also received a lot of requests for slightly more time, and so we have decided to extend the deadline until 11:59pm UK time on Wednesday 7th December. Submission is via the Open Conference System.

We will still endeavour to release the programme before Christmas so to help the referees please get your submissions in as early as possible.

We will also be announcing the registration fees and process next week.

The website also carries details of the Student Bursary application process which is now open. Also remember the Recycle Award.

Finally you can now follow us on twitter via #caasoton

Also, check out the page on this blog dedicated to TAG 2011

Tom Brughmans

Archaeological Computing Research Group, University of Southampton
Networks of networks: a critical review of formal network methods in archaeology
This paper will argue that archaeological network researchers are not well networked themselves, resulting in a limited and sometimes uncritical adoption of formal network methods within the archaeological discipline. This seems to have followed largely from a general unawareness of the historicity of network-based approaches which span at least eight decennia of multi-disciplinary research. Many network analytical techniques that would only find a broader use in the last 15 years were in fact introduced in the archaeological discipline as early as the 1970s. The unawareness of alternative approaches is most prominent in recent archaeological applications of formal network methods, which show a tendency of adopting techniques and models that were fashionable at the time of publication rather than exploring other archaeological and non-archaeological approaches. I will illustrate that knowledge of the diversity of archaeological and non-archaeological network methods is crucial to their critical application and modification within archaeological research contexts.
Through this review I will aim to expose the as yet insufficiently explored potential of formal network-based models and techniques, to raise some issues surrounding an uncritical adoption of such techniques and to provide suggestions for dealing with these issues. In order to move towards richer archaeological applications of formal network methods archaeological network analysts should become better networked both within and outside their discipline.

Kimberley van den Berg

VU University Amsterdam
Good to Think With: exploring the potential of networks as a concept metaphor or intellectual tool
Network approaches are becoming increasingly popular among archaeologists and historians. They provide a broad range of models and methods that inspire scholars in both disciplines to original analyses of various past networks and present datasets. As these approaches gain in reputation, however, more and more questions arise regarding their possibilities and limitations. Particularly unclear is whether network models and methods are applicable to all archaeological or historical datasets and, more importantly, whether such datasets are sufficiently representative to allow for meaningful results. One means of getting beyond these issues involving our data is to deploy networks as a concept metaphor or intellectual tool.
This paper seeks to explore the potential of such an approach for a very specific case study. During the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition, the eastern Mediterranean was a world in crisis, in which around 1200 B.C. the Aegean palaces were destroyed. Recent research shows that the impact of these destructions greatly varied between regions; several sites continued to be inhabited and were still actively engaged in overseas contacts. Current interpretations fail to satisfactorily explain these continued connections. Much can be gained from rethinking our interpretative frameworks and I hold that networks are particularly “good to think with”.

Doug Rocks-Macqueen

University of Edinburgh
Complex Networks and the Individual- How agent based network models can aid our understanding of past perceptions
Agent based modelling programs allow for the construction of large scale complex networks through the interactions of decisions of hundreds to hundreds of thousand individual components. This presentation will “flip” this traditional network tool to examine the individual components using their larger network. It will demonstrate that through the use of networks archaeologists can gather great detail about individuals and how they perceive the world. This methodology could serve as a useful bridge between quantitative methodologies of most network analysis and the more qualitative investigations of other archaeologists.

Amy J. Maitland Gardner

UCL, London
The Maya Royal Court: A model for rules of engagement
The concept of ‘the royal court’ as a particular social, political and cultural organisation based on a ‘network of interdependencies’ rather than as the power of an absolute monarch can be used to describe the configuration of Maya polities in the Late Classic Period (c. 600-900AD). However, how these networks were structured, maintained and developed both internally within the court and among courts and royal families across the Maya region still requires investigation. Starting from Elias’ assertion that the court is continually reproduced through a system of etiquette ([1933] 1983), I investigate what kinds of codes of behaviour existed in Late Classic Maya society through a study of body posture, gesture and proxemics in figural art. In this paper, I will discuss the theoretical frameworks of the royal court and the dynamics of human interaction which includes comparative studies of bodily communication in ancient court societies and theories drawn from sociological and ethological literature concerning the nature of human engagement. I will also discuss the analytical framework employed to consider patterns and combinations of gestures and postures in multi-figural scenes on ceramic vessels and stone monuments from across the Maya region. This approach allows for gesture to be understood as a relational phenomenon and as such the ‘networks of interdependencies’ composing ancient Maya royal courts and the network of inter-court relationships may be fruitfully explored.

Agata Czeszewska

Adam Mickiewicz University, Institute of Prehistory
Wall paintings from Çatalhöyük as an example of creating social networks between the past and the present
Çatalhöyük is one of the most fascinating sites of the Neolithic world. The site was discovered in late 50s, in central Anatolia. Since then more than 70 wall paintings have been discovered within the Neolithic houses. Wall paintings found at Çatalhöyük are one of the first examples of human art which appeared in domestic areas. They are connected with special events important for Neolithic society like death, birth, hunting. Therefore, they were constantly appearing and disappearing in the houses. In addition wall paintings are a tool of creating the links between past and present, between ancestors and descendants, between death and life. According to Ian Hodder and his conception of entanglement (see: Hodder, I. 2006. The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhoyuk, ) I wish to consider wall paintings within this frame. People and objects, also wall paintings are entangle into complex relationships. Every single act of preparing and covering the wall with painting was accompanied by complicated arrangements of tools, paints, brushes, events, rituals and people. Wall paintings play an active role in social interaction and connecting people, instead of being just passive and esthetic piece of art. Wall paintings were a part of dynamically created structures – houses. And so wall paintings determined internal rhythm of the house and society.
What’s more wall paintings have an enormous influence on contemporary recipients. The relationships between past and present, are very strongly undermined in modern references. Nowadays people use past motifs and constructs in creating their own reality. They are also entangled into past ad so they interact with the past. The aim of this paper is to analyse these relationships and interactions on both past and contemporaneous level. I wish to consider emotional and social involvement into creating the wall paintings from Çatalhöyük.

Amara Thornton

UCL Institute of Archaeology
Archaeological Relations: The ‘Heritage’ Network in British Mandate Palestine and Transjordan
Departments of Antiquities in Palestine and Transjordan were created during the early days of the British Mandates. These official branches of the administration encapsulated the importance of archaeology to the governing bodies of these newly delineated countries. In tracing the relationship of these departments to the Palestine and Transjordan Governments, the connections between archaeologists, government officials and architects illuminates archaeology’s place in the interwar period Mandates, and its contribution to political and economic agendas in these semi-colonial settings. As networks underpin all aspects of society, exploring the links between people, places and organisations reveals the complexities of imperial history, and exposes the position of the “intellectual aristocracy” in that history.
This paper will discuss how key relationship types can be used to reconstruct the framework for archaeological work, taking the British Mandates in Palestine and Transjordan as the case study. It offers a practical methodology for analysing archival material by focusing on the wider archaeological network, which both incorporates and stretches beyond the scholarly community, as a means to understand the development, management and promotion of archaeology in the past.

Heather Giddens

Cardiff University
Neolithic meshworks: paths of becoming in the LBK
The early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) communities of central Europe (5600-4900 cal BC) certainly represent a ‘connected’ world. Distribution maps of raw materials such as Spondylus shell and imported flint suggest that exchange networks may have extended over vast areas of the continent. At the same time, materiality similarities between scattered settlements imply an extensive social network based on durable kinship bonds. Traditionally, these connections have been viewed along structural lines, assuming an almost logistical system of trading connections. However, alternative models are available.
This session uses Ingold’s concept of being-in-the world and the meshwork to reinterpret spatial patterns seen within the archaeological record. Here, places are not seen as containers of action, but rather as points of entanglement as people move through time and space. Focusing on two localised areas of LBK settlement in the Lower Rhine Basin (the middle Merzbach and upper Schlangengraben valleys of the Aldenhoven Plateau), I will consider the meshwork of entwined paths that defines the social environment of this area. In doing so, consideration with be given to three different scales of ‘place’: the longhouse, the settlement and the settlement cell. Through this re-interpretation, I hope to highlight how Ingold’s meshworks can provide fresh insights on the complex social world of the LBK.

Erik van Rossenberg

Leiden University
Getting your networks right: how to deal with typochronological fuzziness in historical trajectories
Traditional chronologies tend to be an unquestioned starting-point for archaeological case studies in network analysis. The reification of spatio-temporal entities leaves the problem of typochronological fuzziness unresolved. In this paper I will present a case study that adopts network analysis to explore the historical validity of typochronological sequences. I will show that such a degree of regional differentiation (i.e. gaps in networks) can be discerned in the distribution of Middle Bronze Age vessel types in Central Italy that an equally high degree of typochronological fuzziness should be taken into account. The resulting ‘time-transgressive’ scenarios (i.e. chronological overlap of periods, phases and subphases) challenge traditional typochronologies, shed a new light on traditional accounts of network changes and should therefore be regarded as a cautionary tale for archaeological case studies in network analysis. On a more positive note: network analysis can become a principal tool to resolve long-standing issues in typochronologies, to decide which places should be situated in which networks, as a starting-point for a network perspective on historical trajectories.

Steven Johnson argues that the networks we see in the outside world actually mimic those network patterns in the brain. He is interested in finding out what characterises these spaces in the outside world in which new ideas emerge. He calls this “The liquid network”, an environment where ideas and problems get together and that breeds innovation. It would be great if we could identify such spaces and promote hunches to limit their incubation periods.

For all of you out there who want to come up with the next big thing, here is what you need to do: give ideas that might be lingering in you brain time to develop and constantly try to get different peoples’ ideas together. Apparently we should spend more time trying to connect ideas rather than protect them. “Chance favours the connected mind”.

PS: thanks to Irad Malkin for bringing this video to my attention.