Today I got an email that made me smile a lot: the new issue of Journal of Historical Network Research is out and guess what the focus is. Loads of Roman network stuff! As far as my work interests are concerned, this is Christmas.
It is a special issue on ancient politics and network analysis, edited by Wim Broekaert, Elena Köstner, and Christian Rollinger. It includes 10 articles, plus an introduction by the editors, plus an epilogue by Giovanni Ruffini. All papers are about the ancient world from Athens to the Medieval Roman Empire. There is a bit of Cicero in there (would be weird if there wasn’t), Pliny the Younger, Theoderic: all of your favourite historical characters reduced to a dot.
Despite offering plenty of sources and great theories to bust, Roman Studies has been very light on network applications. This special issue single handedly almost doubles the number of such studies.
I look forward to digging through these papers to explore the creative and interesting ways network science has been applied. Hopefully it will inspire me to do more of it myself. I can encourage you all to do the same.
Archaeological Networks 
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