Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Linking Differently: Complex Behavioural Patterns Evolving from Prehistoric Networks
Content:
Non-linear behavioural dynamics evolving from network structures is one of the most prominent research topics explaining patterns in material culture at different spatio-temporal scales. Prehistoric networks were shaped, re-shaped and collapsed through long periods of time across wide geographic areas. Theoretical and methodological approaches to networks and complexity are intensively developed in archaeology and anthropology. ‘Metaphoric’ applications are being replaced by quantitative approaches. At this point, numerous computational tools developed under this epistemological umbrella,
This session focuses on networks cases of applications and the tools involved in their implementation. It also aims to provide an overview of the state of the art, recent advances, and further directions in studying complex systems and networks in prehistory. We invite contributions from all archaeology-related disciplines dealing with the following questions:
•Case studies on complexity and network analysis in prehistory.
•What are the differences between the features of hunter-gatherer’s social networks and those characteristic of Neolithic societies?
•How simulations of the emergent phenomena in a diachronic perspective can contribute to the understanding of transformations associated with landscape and social endeavours?
•Is implementing complexity theory and network analysis into research programs justified in case of simple explanatory alternatives?
•What is the overall impact of complexity theory and network analysis on the development of method and theory in archaeology and anthropology?
•Is this methodology just a short-term hype or has it come to stay?
•What is the impact of chronological resolution on the observed patterns? Do they still contain the potential to perform further applications, being squeezed to the very last drop?
•Epistemological approaches have the potential to provide a theoretical framework to the analytical results obtained, but they still lack of a unified corpus. Could all these approaches be integrated under the umbrella of a unified paradigm for network studies?
Keywords:
Complex Systems, Networks, Holocene, Social Network Analysis, Chronology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Joaquín R Jiménez-Puerto (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Aleksandr Diachenko (Ukraine) 2
Oreto García Puchol (Spain) 1
Affiliations:
1. Departamento de Prehistoria, Arqueología e Hª Antigua
2. Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
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