An enchantment of digital archaeology

Dreamers, necromancers and modellers in archaeology rejoice: an enchantment of digital archaeology is published.

Shawn Graham’s new book is about simulation, agents, gaming, AI and archaeology. What? I was sceptical as I started reading, but the huge value of Shawn’s enchantment message dawned on me half way through the first chapter. I’m allowed to wonder, to be in awe, to dream, whilst doing good computational archaeology. In fact, Shawn argues we should do more of it. At the very least, we should avoid the disenchantment that can be invoked by traditional data collection and analysis, which we do just because we feel we have to as ‘serious’ academics.

AN ENCHANTMENT OF DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Raising the Dead with Agent-Based Models, Archaeogaming and Artificial Intelligence

by Prof. Shawn Graham

Here are my thoughts on the book.

This book discusses and illustrates how digital archaeology can and should be enchanting. The focus on enchantment justifies the many personal thoughts and stories throughout the book: it is really the personal experience of and engagement with digital experiments that leads to enchantment. The author does a great job in transmitting his enthusiasm and is not afraid to highlight his failures. Indeed, in many parts of the book failed experiments take centre stage to showcase that the scholars’ learning process and surprise matters hugely when doing digital archaeology. But also that the author’s engagement with traditional data collection and attitudes to doing archaeology led to disenchantment. Many readers of this book might share this disenchantment: they will find in this book inspiration and encouragement to pursue those ideas they previously discarded as wacky, frivolous or “not academic”; they are allowed to play, fail and be enchanted. There is huge value in this message.

Simulating the past: submit your book proposals now

Simulation approaches are slowly becoming more mainstream in our discipline, rightly so! This trend will very much be supported by a new book series published by Springer: “Simulating the Past”. I would love to see some network/simulation books in the series. Have an idea for a book in this series? Get in touch with the editors! 1000229 [at] uab [dot] cat

More details here:

In collaboration with Springer Verlag, we are planning a new book series  (“Simulating the Past”) to publish relevant research on the methodological and theoretical aspects of computer simulation in archaeological and historical contexts. Our goal is to adress the theoretical,  technichal and technological aspects of social sciences explanation, in special those aspects related  with historical time, in order to promote deeper understanding and collaboration in the study of past human behavior and history. We would like to find good monographs, PhD dissertations, or ideas for edited volumes from different disciplinary backgrounds: history, ecology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, computer science and complex systems.  Contributions are welcomed on all subjects (from Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography and Political or Economic History) using different approaches to social simulation and presenting case studies from any region of the world and any prehistoric or historic period. Theoretical aspects of social and cultural evolution are also encouraged.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Applications of computational modeling in archaeology and history
• Social organization and change
• Cultural transmission and evolution
• Long term socio-ecology
• Human adaptation and climate change
• Cooperation and social interaction
• Trade and exchange
• Hunter-Gatherers
• Origins of State
• Origins of Agriculture
• Economic History
• History of War and Conflict
• Paleolithic, Neolithic , Ages of Metals
• Greek and Roman History
• Medieval History
• Modern History

If you have an already written text, or do you plan to write such a text in the next two years, we would like to read it and consider for publication with the imprint of Springer Verlag.

The provisional Editorial Board has the follwoing experts in the field:

Series Editor: Juan A. Barceló (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona),

Editorial Board:   Michael Barton (Arizona State University), Claudio Cioffi-Revilla (George Mason University), André Costopoulos (McGill University), Sergey Gavrilets (University of Tennessee), Marco Janssen (Arizona State University), Tim Kohler (Washington State University), Steven Shennan (University College, London), Flaminio Squazzoni (University of Brescia), William J. Turkel (Western Ontario University, Canada).

Book: support networks for persecuted Jews in WWII

I find support and assistance networks extremely interesting! Mainly because they pose so many interesting missing data problems, and as an archaeologist I like a good data problem from time to time. These kinds of networks are very much based on trust, since once a person or connection is compromised it will have disastrous, often murderous, consequences for many in the network. This topic is explored for the case of persecuted Jews in National Socialism during World War II in Marten Düring’s work. He traced a number of different groups of people, how they got in touch with each other, and how they provided assistance to persecuted Jews. Marten told me in most cases the support networks grow slowly and are built on strong trusted relationships. Often new individuals will be introduced to the network through a common contact who has received assistance before and vouches for the individual. However, there are a few cases when individuals gambled and got in touch without a pre-existing well-trusted connection. Such decisions could be disastrous, sometimes leading to the entire network being rounded up by the Gestapo, questioned and sentenced (which is often why these support networks are documented and why Marten was able to reconstruct them). The ‘data problems’ I mentioned are a consequence of the sheer secretive nature of the support network: hiding the fact you offered support to persecuted Jews was a question of life or death. It is particularly hard to reconstruct support networks that were not caught by the Gestapo, and one can only assume that those that were caught are not entirely documented, that there are a lot of missing nodes and links. Marten Düring offers us an in-depth look at a few cases which are particularly well-known, thanks to his rummaging around in archives for years.

I believe this study will prove invaluable for better understanding support networks and the missing data problems they pose. I see particular similarities with networks of the trade in licit antiquities, organized crime and really any type of so-called ‘dark network’. This work offers a reminder of how the study of the past can help us tackle challenges in the present.

Marten’s work was recently published by De Gruyter as a book, check it out here and find the abstract below.

Also keep an eye out for Marten’s chapter in the forthcoming ‘The Connected Past’ edited volume to be published by Oxford University Press early in 2016 🙂

Why did people help Jews hide from the Nazis? This study examines interactions between helpers and aid recipients using the methods of social network research. Based on six Berlin case studies, the author looks at the social determinants for willingness to help, trust formation, network effects, and the daily practice of providing help from the perspectives of helpers and aid recipients.

A small Greek world, by Irad Malkin

Irad Malkin’s new book ‘A small Greek world: networks in the Ancient Mediterranean’ has just appeared with Oxford University Press. Looks like a fascinating read, seeing Ancient Greek history through network goggles. Now available at a reduced price as well! See the offer on the publisher’s webpage.

Here is the book’s summary:

Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period when Greeks founded coastal city states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion: mother cities were numerous and the new settlements (“colonies”) would often engender more settlements. The “Greek center” was at sea; it was formed through back-ripple effects of cultural convergence, following the physical divergence of independent settlements. “The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples” (Cicero). Overall, and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors like the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between “center and periphery” hardly mattered (all was peri-, “around,” nor was a bi-polar contrast with Barbarians of much significance.

Should we admire the Greeks for having created their civilization in spite of the enormous distances and discontinuous territories separating their independent communities? Or did the salient aspects of their civilization form and crystallize because of its architecture as a de-centralized network? This book claims that the answer lies in network attributes shaping a “Small Greek World,” where separation is measured by degrees of contact rather than by physical dimensions.

The SAGE handbook of Social Network Analysis

A new handbook is to be published soon by SAGE titled ‘The SAGE handbook of Social Network Analysis’. It is edited by John Scott and Peter Carrington. A full list of chapters can be read online.

Looking at the scope and contributors, this seems like another future reference-work by largely the same authors that brought us Carrington, Scott & Wasserman eds. 2005. Might just attest of the high institutionalisation (and North-American focus) of SNA. The scope is not limited to methodology though. A number of theoretical chapters are included, possibly as a result of the popularity of the idea of the network as a metaphor.

Some chapters might prove to be of particular interest to archaeologists, anthropologists and historians:
Network Theory: Stephen P Borgatti and Virginie Lopez-Kidwell
Kinship, Class, and Community: Douglas R White
Animal Social Networks: Katherine Faust
Corporate Elites and Intercorporate Networks: William K Carroll and J P Sapinski
Social Movements and Collective Action: Mario Diani
Scientific and Scholarly networks: Howard D White
Cultural Networks: Paul DiMaggio
Qualitative Approaches: Betina Hollstein
Kinship Network Analysis: Klaus Hamberger, Michael Houseman and Douglas R White