R03 - Unravelling the Knot: Network Approaches to the Study of the Neolithic Transition in Southwest Asia and Beyond

Session Organisers: Camilla Mazzucato

Category: Population - Network

Session Abstract: Over the past decade the study of the past has been increasingly influenced by network thinking, a period in which archaeological research has seen a sharp increase in the use of network concepts and formal applications across different scales and methodologies. Network methods offer flexible and effective concepts and statistical tools for describing, investigating and analyzing how entities relate to other entities within complex and integrated structures. The flexibility of network methods is manifested in the wide range of approaches that have been applied to archaeological data that span from studies drawing on physics and complexity theory to others inspired by sociology or by Actor Network Theory (ANT), assemblage and entanglement theory. Recent studies have revealed the Neolithic transition as a protracted and multi-centered process defined by a diverse landscape of social and subsistence strategies across Southwest Asia. Within this context, networks have been increasingly used as both conceptual devices and formal applications to model relations at different scales using diverse datasets. This workshop provides a venue for showcasing new research that applies network methods to the study of the Neolithic transition and for discussing how network representations and models can be of help in disentangling the way the Neolithization process developed in Southwest Asia and beyond.

Room: H

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Fiona Coward	Multiscalar and multiply-material: archaeological networks are not the poor relative of social networks but key to understanding the Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia.
16:50 - 17:10	Fiona Pichon, Juan José Ibáñez	Modeling Obsidian Exchange Networks during the Establishment of Neolithic in Southwest Asia
17:10 - 17:30	Damase Mouralis, Çiler Altınbilek Algül, Orkun Kaycı, Semra Balcı	Cilicia between Central Anatolia and the Levant: Evidence of obsidian exchange from the Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic period
17:30 - 17:50	Camilla Mazzucato, Michele Coscia	Using network variance to investigate social relations at a micro-scale. Socio-material archaeological networks and biological ties at Çatalhöyük