How can we understand past human behaviour using points and lines? What can network science reveal about the transport of goods over the Roman road system, the frequency of interactions and cultural exchange between Pueblo communities in the Pre-Hispanic US Southwest, or the spread of information using fire beacons on top of Bronze Age towers in Sardinia? Network science techniques have been applied to these and many other research questions, to help understand the behaviour of our ancestors across the globe for the last three million years. Such applications date back to at least the 1960s, but like in so many other disciplines they only became more common since the early 2000s.
In this presentation I will provide an overview of how archaeologists have used network science to address a wide range of research topics. I will trace how graph theory, complexity science and social network analysis have influenced the adoption of techniques among archaeologists. In doing so, I will focus in particular on the challenges archaeological network researchers face: challenges that we might be able to overcome through collaboration with physicists. I will illustrate in a bit more detail what it is about network research that interests archaeologists, by drawing examples from my own work on Roman trade and visual signalling in the Medieval Himalayas. In the former example, I will present a model where Roman traders are connected in a small-world social network structure, share information and trade pots, to explore the effect on lowering the network’s average shortest path length on the distribution of pots. In the latter example, I will present some work in progress that aims to explore a hypothesised visual signalling network between hundreds of Medieval forts on top of peaks in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas.