Connected Past workshop registration open

Workshop Announcement:

THE CONNECTED PAST: NETWORK ANALYSIS FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND HISTORIANS

Networks offer one of the newest and most exciting approaches to archaeological and historical data analysis, and over the last two years, the The Connected Past team has brought together scholars from across the globe to discuss their research, with a session at Birmingham TAG 2011, the Southampton conference in March 2012, a session at the SAAs in Hawaii in April this year, and a collaboration with HESTIA this coming July.

But we’re also aware that starting to do network analysis isn’t always easy. It can be difficult to know which software to use, how to present data, what questions to ask, and what results really show. Because it’s hard for researchers at all levels who are starting to think about network analysis, we are delighted to announce that we have put together a programme for a two-day practical workshop at the University of Southampton on 17-18 September 2013.

The cost of the workshop is £20. PLACES ARE LIMITED TO 20. To register your interest, please email connectedpast@soton.ac.uk with a short statement detailing why you want to participate. We will be in touch once the registration deadline (22nd July) has passed. The programme can be found below and on The Connected Past website.

In addition, for those who want to overdose on networks, Southampton will also be hosting the 12th Mathematics of Networks meeting on 16th September. It’s very multi-disciplinary, with a focus on social science applications and the technical side of things.

Programme:

Tuesday 17th September

Morning:
• Introduction to networks in archaeology and history
• Preparing data for network analysis
• network creation and visualisation
Lunch
• Archaeological and historical case studies
• Round table discussion
Reception at the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation

Wednesday 18th September

Morning:
• Network analysis software
• Analysing network structure
Lunch
• What method to use?
• Geographical network techniques
• Issues in archaeological and historical network analysis

Tutors:
• Andy Bevan (UCL)
• Tom Brughmans (Southampton)
• Anna Collar (McDonald Institute, Cambridge)
• Fiona Coward (Bournemouth)
• Marten Düring (Nijmegen)
• Claire Lemercier (Sciences-Po, Paris)
• Angus Mol (Leiden)

The Future of Historical Network Research

I am delighted to spread the word about a great upcoming conference: The Future of Historical Network Research. It is organised by the Historical network analysis team that have been holding regular workshops in Germany for a few years now. This is their first conference and I was told to expect an awesome keynote! The event will take place at the University of Hamburg on 13-15 September 2013. There are even a limited number of bursaries available.

Deadline of the CFP is 25 July 2013.

More info can be found on the conference website and below.

Call for Papers

The concepts and methods of social network analysis in historical research are no longer merely used as metaphors but are increasingly applied in practice. In the last decades several studies proved that formal methods derived from social network analysis can be fruitfully applied to selected bodies of historical data as well. This relational perspective on historical sources has helped historical research to gain an entirely new methodological vantage point. Historical Network Research today is a research method as well as an online and offline training framework and quickly growing research community.

We are grateful for generous support from:

NeDiMAH – Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities

ESF – European Science Foundation

CGG – Centrum for Globalisation and Governance at the University of Hamburg

When we began to apply network analysis to history, there were no suitable points of reference and hardly any previous work which successfully combined Social Network Analysis methods and source-criticism. Over the years we have developed an infrastructure for historians to engage in research on networks, to exchange ideas and to receive training.
After eight workshops on Historical Network Research at locations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland it is time to look back at what has been achieved in the last years and to explore what might be next. For this first conference we therefore invite papers which integrate social network analysis methods and theories with historical research interests. Topics can cover any historical epoch and may include but are not limited to research on the topics below. Contributions from scholars in Computer Science, the Digital Humanities and related disciplines are welcome.

Collective action
Trade networks
Credit networks
Covert networks
Spatial networks
Dynamic networks
Kinship networks
Tools for the extraction of relational data from text
Network extraction from metadata
Semantic networks
Tools for data visualisation and management
Communication networks
Transnational networks
…
The papers will be organized as parts of the following four panels:

Section I: “Information Visualisation”
Section II: “Space and Time”
Section III: “Linked Data and Ontological Methods”
Section IV: Overlaps between Network Analysis and the Digital Humanities

The conference will include keynotes by scholars in history, computational linguistics, semantic networks and data visualisation who will discuss their vision for the future of computer-assisted historical research.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted via this registration form by 25 July 2013. Notifications of paper acceptance will be sent out by 5 August.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at conference@historicalnetworkresearch.org for additional information.

Linda von Keyserlingk, Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr
Florian Kerschbaumer, University of Klagenfurt
Martin Stark, University of Hamburg
Ulrich Eumann, NS Dokumentationszentrum Köln
Marten Düring, Radboud University Nijmegen

Applications of Social Network Analysis (ASNA)

The Applications of Social Network Analysis conference might be of interest to some. Held in Zurich, 27-30 August 2013. The event combines paper sessions with hands-on practical workshops including SNA (advanced and newbie), Siena, Visone, ERGM in R, and Discourse. The workshop on Visone will be led by Ulrik Brandes ad Uwe Nagel, the University of Konstanz team you might know from the Caribbean Archaeology project Nexus 1492.

More info can be found on the ASNA website.

Digital Classicist video online

The Digital Classicist people edited the video of the talk I gave a week ago (they do work fast). It’s available on their blog and on my bibliography page. Enjoy 🙂

Special issue Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory: The Connected Past

This is a quick reminder of the 23rd June deadline for extended abstracts for The Connected Past special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. The call for submissions to this special issue is now open. So don’t hesitate any longer and send us that awesome networky paper you have been working on! As you can gather from the CFP below, we want to have a focused special issue with solid case studies that illustrate how network analysis can be useful in archaeology. However, we are really keen to publish really innovative approaches, things that have not been tried before by archaeological network analysts. We look forward to reading your abstracts!

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Connected Past: critical and innovative approaches to networks in archaeology

A special issue of Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory

Edited by: Anna Collar, Tom Brughmans, Fiona Coward and Barbara Mills

Over the last decade the number of published archaeological applications of network methods and theories has increased significantly. A number of research themes deserve further exploration, however. How do particular archaeological research contexts drive the selection and adaptation of formal network methods from the wide range of existing approaches? What is the role archaeological data can play in network methods? What are the decisions we are faced with when defining nodes and ties, and what assumptions underlie these definitions? How can our theoretical approaches be expressed through formal methods incorporating empirical data? Are network theories and methods compatible? How can materiality be incorporated within existing network approaches? How can we deal with long-term network evolution within archaeological research contexts?

This special issue aims to illustrate through innovative and critical archaeological case studies that these problems can be overcome, and that by doing so the role of archaeological network analysis within the archaeologist’s toolbox will become better defined.

This special issue invites well-developed archaeological case studies in which a network-based method is formulated as the best approach to an archaeological research question. A key conviction of this special issue is that theoretical and methodological concerns should be raised through practice. As such, papers are expected to either develop a critical and detailed archaeological analysis through commonly applied network-based approaches, or to illustrate how archaeological research contexts can require the development or adoption of innovative network techniques. Such a collection of case studies will illustrate that the network is not an end-product; it is a research perspective that allows one to ask and answer unique questions of archaeological relevance.

Please send extended abstracts (1000 words) to connectedpast@soton.ac.uk by 23 June 2013.

Notification of acceptance: July 2013.

Submission of full papers for peer-review to guest editors: 22 September 2013.

Submission of revised papers for peer-review to JAMT: 24 November 2013.

Please note that the acceptance of extended abstracts and peer-review by guest editors is not a guarantee that the paper will be published in the special issue. Individual papers will have to successfully go through the JAMT peer-review process before publication can be guaranteed.

Mathematics of Networks meeting

Some might be interested to attend the 12th mathematics of networks meeting, held on 16 September 2013 at the University of Southampton (conveniently the day before The Connected Past workshop which we will announce next week 🙂 All previous meetings have focused on applied examples of network science, so it should be a multi-disciplinary informal seminar with plenty of social science network studies and maybe even some from Humanities (send in your abstracts humanists!).

More info on the Mathematics of Networks website and below.

The Twelfth Mathematics of Networks meeting will be held at the University of Southampton on 16th September 2013. The conference brings together people from many research backgrounds who have a common interest in using mathematical tools for problems in the study of networks. The theme of this meeting is the mathematics of Social Networks. While any presentations related to mathematics and networking will be considered, those on Social Networks will be given preference. Thanks to Ben Parker for organising this Mathematics of Networks meeting.

This meeting is sponsored and hosted by the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute and the Southampton Initiative in Mathematical Modelling.

SNA Summer School Trier

Image from University Trier website.

Dear German-speaking friends (and everyone who likes the sound of the German language)! The University of Trier will organise a summer school in Social Network Analysis on 23-28 September 2013. My friends Marten Düring and Martin Stark, both historians, will be instructors at the Summer School. The school offers a one-week intense course in SNA, papers, workshops and software sessions. Sounds good? Sign up!

More info can be found on the Trier website and below.

Trie­rer Sum­mer School on So­ci­al Net­work Ana­ly­sis
23.-28. Sep­tem­ber 2013

Die Trie­rer Sum­mer School on So­ci­al Net­work Ana­ly­sis bie­tet im Rah­men eines ein­wö­chi­gen In­ten­siv­an­ge­bots eine um­fas­sen­de Ein­füh­rung in die theo­re­ti­schen Kon­zep­te, Me­tho­den und An­wen­dun­gen der So­zia­len Netz­werkana­ly­se. Die Ver­an­stal­tung rich­tet sich an Nach­wuchs­wis­sen­schaft­le­rIn­nen und Stu­die­ren­de aller geis­tes-, kul­tur- und so­zi­al­wis­sen­schaft­li­chen Fä­cher, die sich mit der Ana­ly­se so­zia­ler Struk­tu­ren be­schäf­ti­gen und Ein­blick in die Me­tho­den der So­zia­len Netz­werkana­ly­se (SNA) neh­men möch­ten.

Das An­ge­bot auf einem Blick

eine Woche in­ten­si­ve Ein­füh­rung in die SNA durch Ex­per­ten
in­di­vi­du­el­le For­schungs­be­ra­tung durch die Do­zen­ten
ein­füh­ren­de Li­te­ra­tur im On­line-Ap­pa­rat sowie Lern­ma­te­ria­li­en
Ein­füh­rung in gän­gi­ge Soft­ware zur SNA (Pajek, Gephi)
Gast­vor­trag: Mi­ri­am J. Lub­bers (Uni­ver­si­tat Autònoma de Bar­ce­lo­na) „The dy­na­mics of per­so­nal net­works of im­mi­grants over an eight-ye­ar pe­ri­od“
Work­shop „Mixed Me­thods“/„Vi­su­al Net­work Re­se­arch“ (Net-Map, Venn­Ma­ker)
Work­shop „Data Mi­ning und an­ge­wand­te Netz­werkana­ly­se“
Work­shop „Pro­zess­ge­ne­rier­te Daten und his­to­ri­sche Netz­werkana­ly­se“
An­rech­nung der Sum­mer School nach ECTS mit 3 credit points
Ver­pfle­gung mit Snacks und Ge­trän­ken wäh­rend der Ver­an­stal­tung
an­ge­neh­me Ler­n­at­mo­sphä­re mit vie­len Ge­le­gen­hei­ten für “so­ci­al net­wor­king”
abend­li­ches Rah­men­pro­gramm (ge­mein­sa­mes Abend­es­sen/Stadt­rund­gang)

Digital Classicist seminar series

Today I will present my work at the Digital Classicist in London and I thought it would be good to advertise all the other great seminars lined up this season. The full list can be found on their blog and below. You can download my slides of today’s presentation here.

Most talks will deal with digital Roman, Greek or Medieval literary sources. Quite a few, however, consider the crossover between literary and material sources. The Hellespont project is a good example of this, which will be presented by my friends Agnes Thomas and Matteo Romanello with Francesco Mambrini on 9 August. And then there is The Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology Project which will be presented by Eleni Bozia on 12 June. I am also intrigued by Adrian Ryan’s ‘Quantifying stylistic distance between Athenian vase-paintings’, welcoming Athenian vases to the digital age. Another interesting innovative topic is Valeria Vitale’s ontology of 3D visualisation in cultural heritage. All really varied and innovative topics that crosscut conventional disciplinary boundaries. I like it 🙂

Jun 7 Tom Brughmans (Southampton)
Exploring visibility networks in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain with Exponential Random Graph Models

Jun 14 Valeria Vitale (King’s College London)
An Ontology for 3D Visualization in Cultural Heritage

Jun 21 Tom Cheesman (Swansea)
Putting Translations To Work: TransVis

Jun 28 Adrian Ryan (Kwazulu-Natal)
Quantifying stylistic distance between Athenian vase-paintings

Jul 5 Dot Porter (Pennsylvania)
The Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance: a federated platform for discovery and research

Jul 12 16:30 Eleni Bozia (University of Florida)
The Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology Project

17:30 Greta Franzini (University College London)
A catalogue of digital editions: Towards an edition of Augustine’s City of God

Jul 19 Federico Boschetti (Pisa) & Bruce Robertson (Mount Allison)
An Integrated System For Generating And Correcting Polytonic Greek OCR

Jul 26 Marie-Claire Beaulieu (Tufts)
Teaching with the Perseids Platform: Tools and methods

Aug 2 Neel Smith (Holy Cross)
Scholarly reasoning and writing in an automatically assembled and tested digital library

Aug 9 Agnes Thomas, Francesco Mambrini & Matteo Romanello (DAI, Berlin)
Insights in the World of Thucydides: The Hellespont Project as a research environment for Digital History

CAA Poland tomorrow

Dear Polish and less-Polish friends! Tomorrow a new CAA chapter will have it’s inaugural meeting: CAA Poland is born! The line-up sounds great, although a few more vowels would be welcome 🙂 Philip Verhagen will give a keynote presentation and Iza Romanowska might make a guest appearance with a recorded remote presentation. Check out the CAA Poland Facebook group for more information. Let’s go to Poland all!

Program konferencji:

9.30 – 10.00 rejestracja uczestników
10.00 – 10.10 inauguracja konferencji
10.10 – 10.30 CAA International i CAA oddział Polska – wprowadzenie
10.30 – 11.15 wykład gościnny: dr J.W.H.P. (Philip) Verhagen, Faculteit der Letteren (oudheid), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

11.15 – 11.30 przerwa kawowa

PANEL I: Panel ekspercki

11.30 – 11.50 dr A. Prinke (Muzeum Archeologiczne w Poznaniu) OD OŚMIOBITOWCA DO PROJEKTÓW EUROPEJSKICH”: Dorobek Muzeum Archeologicznego w Poznaniu na polu komputeryzacji”
11.50 – 12.10 mgr inż. P. Kaczmarek (Esri Polska /Fundacja Centrum GeoHistorii) Mój poligon doświadczeń z historią i archeologią czyli świat oczami GISowca
12.10 – 12.30 mgr J. D. Mejor (Biblioteka Narodowa) Stan digitalizacji w sektorze Bibliotek
12.30 – 12.45 dyskusja
12.45 – 13.00 przerwa

PANEL II: LiDAR

13.00 – 13.20 mgr M. Legut – Pintal, mgr Ł. Pintal (Politechnika Wrocławska) Perspektywy wykorzystania danych pozyskanych w programie ISOK w prospekcji archeologicznej. Przykład założeń
obronnych dorzecza Nysy Kłodzkiej
13.20 – 13.40 K. Hanus (Uniwersytet Jagielloński/ University of Sydney) Optymalizacja przetwarzania danych LiDAR pozyskanych w trakcie badań nad cywilizacjami lasu tropikalnego
13.40 – 14.00 M. Jakubczak (Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego) LiDAR, GIS, GPS w badaniach nad prahistorycznym górnictwem krzemienia, na przykładzie pola górniczego „Skałecznica Duża”
14.00 – 14.15 dyskusja
14.15 – 15.15 przerwa obiadowa

PANEL III: Nowoczesne metody dokumentacji (I)

15.15 – 15.35 inż. arch. Karolina Majdzik (Politechnika Wrocławska), Anna Kubicka (Politechnika Wrocławska) Cyfrowe metody dokumentacji w pracach archeologiczno – architektonicznych na podstawie badań w Deir el – Bahari i Marina el – Alamein
15.35 – 15.55 mgr P. Rajski (Politechnika Wrocławska) Doświadczenia z inwentaryzacji zamków śląskiego pogranicza. Porównanie metod inwentaryzacji w badaniach architektonicznych i konserwacji
15.55 – 16.15 mgr W. Ejsmond (Uniwersytet Warszawski), mgr J.Chyla (Uniwersytet Jagielloński) Zastosowanie mobilnego systemu GIS w badaniach na zespole stanowisk archeologicznych
w Gebelein
16.15 – 16.30 dyskusja

PANEL IV: Nowoczesne metody dokumentacji (II)

16.30 – 16.50 mgr Ł. Miszk (Uniwersytet Jagielloński) Standardy prowadzenia dokumentacji na stanowisku Nea Pafos
16.50 – 17.10 mgr M. Bryk, mgr J. Chyla (Uniwersytet Jagielloński) Weryfikacja archeologicznych badań powierzchniowych przy pomocy GIS
17.10 – 17.25 dyskusja
17.25 – 17.40 przerwa kawowa

PANEL V: Prospekcja i analiza danych

17.40 – 18.00 mgr B. Pankowski (Uniwersytet Jagielloński), mgr Andrzej Święch Użycie nowych technologii w badaniach podwodnych na Wiśle
18.00 – 18.20 A. Rokoszewski (Uniwersytet Warszawski) Gdzie wzrok sięga – wykorzystanie analizy pola widzenia (viewshed analysis) do badań archeologicznych
18.20 – 18.40 M. Gilewski (Uniwersytet Warszawski) Wykorzystanie Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) w badaniach nad rolnictwem Majów
18.40 – 19.00 dyskusja

19.00 – 19.30 spotkanie CAA PL

Presentation Digital Classicist Friday

Visibility networks in Southern Spain

This Friday I will present my work on visibility networks in Southern Spain at the Digital Classicist seminar series in London. The event is free and wine will be served!!! And I can also guarantee a fascinating talk and good conversation 🙂 Really looking forward to it!

Tom Brughmans (University of Southampton)
‘Exploring visibility networks in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain with Exponential Random Graph Models’

Friday June 7 at 16:30
Room G37, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU

Are lines of sight between Roman towns important for explaining their location? Through a case study on visibility patterns between urban settlements in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain, this paper will discuss how Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) can help explore hypothetical past processes of interaction and site location. With these models the frequency of certain subnetworks in random networks and the empirically attested network is compared, to examine the probability that the subnetworks might have emerged through random processes. This paper will critically evaluate the potential and limitations of such an approach for archaeology.

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

All are welcome

The full 2013 programme can be found on the Digital Classicist website.