Archaeological networks and social interaction

Abstract

This chapter traces how network concepts developed from spatial metaphors to tools used by sociologists and anthropologists to visualise and analyse social relations. The first archaeologists using network methods drew on a geographical tradition of spatial connectivity, rather than the newly developed tools and methods in sociology. This led to the recent generally accepted assumption that archaeological networks are essentially spatial in nature and social interaction can only be studied in spatial terms. Network analysis in archaeology is as a result rarely ‘social’ from a social theoretical perspective. In this chapter, recent theoretical advances to include more agency in archaeological network analysis are discussed. Recent developments focus on communities of interaction and multiscalar analysis. Various theoretical and methodological challenges remain but network analysis is, without doubt, a useful tool for studying social interaction archaeologically.