Networks: one size fits all, or Jack-of-all-trades and master of none? The concept of the network in archaeology and anthropology: qualitative heuristic, quantitative method, or anachronistic fad?

Conference: Early Concepts of Humans and Nature: Universal, Specific, Interchanged

Dates: 7-9 October 2021

Abstract:

The term ‘network’ has become common in archaeology over the last couple of decades, influenced of course by developments outside the discipline, particularly in digital technologies. One charge levelled at the use of network concepts and methods to study past societies is thus whether the term and the related concepts are simply an anachronistic fad: does everything look networked in prehistory simply because everything is networked in the 21st century? For example, the adoption of network analogies was preceded by the analogy of the brain as a computer and society and culture as systems which became extremely popular in the early days of the digital revolution, but the weaknesses of this analogy have become increasingly clear. The adoption instead of the concept of networks was intended to replace notions of cognition, behaviour and environments as mechanistic and self-contained with concepts that could incorporate heterogenous agents, interactivity, embodied and distributed cognition and feedback, cascade and emergent effects which recognise individuals, societies and ecosystems as more than simply the sum of their parts. However, a ‘network’ approach remains extremely vaguely defined. At one end of the spectrum, ‘network’ concepts in archaeology and anthropology are applied heuristically, in relation to qualitative approaches to inter-relationships among and between humans and among and between humans, material objects, other animal and plant species and landscapes: e.g. the study of oral mythologies and storytelling as realising vital socio-ecological information, or in considering human interactions with material culture. At the other end of the spectrum, other researchers painstakingly quantify such networks (or more realistically, elements of such networks) as formal models – abstractions of processes distanced to some extent from real-world examples, as for example in agent-based modelling – and as empirical analyses of real-world examples, e.g. in social network analysis of archaeological datasets. The perception within the field is that researchers at the more qualitative and quantitative ends of this spectrum are often not in communication with one another and indeed are often talking past one another or even hostile to one another’ perspectives. This paper will attempt to untangle the range of ways along the qualitative-quantitative spectrum that ‘network’ concepts have been applied in archaeology and anthropology, particularly in relation to Palaeolithic and/or human origins research. What are the pros and cons of such applications, and indeed of the term itself? To what extent can qualitative and quantitative approaches be made to inform and complement one another? Is the concept of the ‘network’ usefully broad, or too broad, to be of any use in archaeology and anthropology?

Source: Manual