Evolving settlement patterns, spatial interaction and the socio-political organisation of late Prepalatial south-central Crete

Paliou, Eleftheria; Bevan, Andrew

doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2016.04.006

Cited by 23 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The range of applications of such modeling now appearing suggests that this approach is mature enough that we should look to include uncertainty as an intrinsic part of such work. Our view echoes that of other authors who tackle other aspects of the uncertainty problem (e.g., Bevan and Wilson, 2013;Davies et al, 2014;Paliou and Bevan, 2016). Using these emerging approaches to account for uncertainty will only enhance the contribution modeling can make to our overall picture of the past.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 71%

“…This context was chosen so that we can illustrate general methodological principles with a practical archeological example, with the added benefit that it allows us to make direct contact with the classic work of Wilson (1987, 1991). The last decade has seen a rise in the use of such modeling techniques on settlement patterns in a wide range of times and other places: Crete in the second millennium BC (Bevan and Wilson, 2013) or the Middle Bronze Age (Evans et al, 2006;Knappett et al, 2008Knappett et al, , 2011Paliou and Bevan, 2016), Iron Age NE Syria (Davies et al, 2014), early second millennium BC Central Anatolia (Palmisano and Altaweel, 2015), late first Millennium Latenian urbanization (Filet, 2017), early Japan (Mizoguchi, 2009), the Maya lowlands (Ducke and Kroefges, 2008), to give just a few examples. Similar methods can be used when modeling of other types of spatial organization, such as lithic assemblages (Wilson, 2007) to name just one.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extra sites are then added using some stochastic model, and results are then produced for this mixture of real and artificial sites. Repeating this many times for many possible missing site configurations will allow us to see whether we can draw any general conclusions about our system independent of our uncertainty about sites; Bevan and Wilson (2013) or Paliou and Bevan (2016) provide examples of this procedure. Another approach to the uncertainty around our selection of sites could be to try different random subsets of known sites.…”

Section: Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Was Thebes Necessary? Contingency in Spatial Modeling

Evans

Rivers

2017

Front. Digit. Humanit.

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When data are poor, we resort to theory modeling. This is a two-step process. We have first to identify the appropriate type of model for the system under consideration and then to tailor it to the specifics of the case. To understand settlement formation, which is the concern of this article, this involves choosing not only input parameter values such as site separations but also input functions that characterizes the ease of travel between sites. Although the generic behavior of the model is understood, the details are not. Different choices will necessarily lead to different outputs (for identical inputs). We can only proceed if choices that are "close" give outcomes that are similar. Where there are local differences, it suggests that there was no compelling reason for one outcome rather than the other. If these differences are important for the historic record, we may interpret this as sensitivity to contingency. We re-examine the rise of Greek city-states as first formulated by Rihll and Wilson in 1979, initially using the same "retail" gravity model. We suggest that, although cities like Athens owe their position to a combination of geography and proximity to other sites, the rise of Thebes is the most contingent, whose success reflects social forces outside the grasp of simple network modeling.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 71%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Was Thebes Necessary? Contingency in Spatial Modeling

Evans

Rivers

2017

Front. Digit. Humanit.

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“…For example, although it is often possible to identify the origin and destination of an object, such data limitations make defining the intermediate steps really challenging. Still, in some cases, the archaeological record provides enough useful information on the exchange of goods or cultural influences among settlements (see for example Paliou and Bevan, 2016 on Bronze Age Crete, or Nakoinz, 2013b on Early Iron Age Germany or Da Vela, 2014-2015 on Archaic/Roman northern Etruria).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling terrestrial route networks to understand inter-polity interactions (southern Etruria, 950-500 BC)

Prignano

Morer

Fulminante

et al. 2019

Journal of Archaeological Science

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Ancient regional routes were vital for interactions between settlements and deeply influenced the development of past societies and their "complexification". At the same time, since any transportation infrastructure needs some level of inter-settlement cooperation to be established, they can also be regarded as an epiphenomenon of social interactions at the regional scale. Here, we propose to analyze ancient pathway networks to understand the organization of cities and villages located in a certain territory, attempting to clarify whether such organization existed and if so, how it functioned.To address such a question, we chose a quantitative approach. Adopting network science as a general framework, by means of formal models, we try to identify how the collective effort that produced the terrestrial infrastructure was directed and organized. We selected a paradigmatic case study: Iron Age southern Etruria, a very well-studied context, with detailed archaeological information about settlement patterns and an established tradition of studies on terrestrial transportation routes, perfectly suitable for testing new techniques. The results of the modelling suggest that a balanced coordinated decision-making process was shaping the route network in Etruria, a scenario which correlates well with the picture elaborated by different scholars using a more traditional technique.

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“…It has been used in archaeology since the late 1980s to estimate flows of people, goods and ideas between settlements, mainly to explore the evolution of settlement systems and the emergence of regional centres within a given settlement distribution. To date, this model has been applied by archaeologists and historians with a relative degree of success in different cultural contexts, including Geometric Greece (Rihll and Wilson 1987;Evans and Rivers 2017), Bronze Age Crete (Bevan and Wilson 2013;Paliou and Bevan 2016), Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age Syria (Davies et al 2014;Palmisano and Altaweel 2015) and Latenian Europe (Filet 2017).…”

Section: Pedestrian Modelling Lead Author: Katherine a Crawfordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Modelling Approaches to Complexity Science in Roman Studies: A Manifesto

Brughmans

Hanson

Mandich

et al. 2019

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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Complexity science refers to the theoretical research perspectives and the formal modelling tools designed to study complex systems. A complex system consists of separate entities interacting following a set of (often simple) rules that collectively give rise to unexpected patterns featuring vastly different properties than the entities that produced them. In recent years a number of case studies have shown that such approaches have great potential for furthering our understanding of the past phenomena explored in Roman Studies. We argue complexity science and formal modelling have great potential for Roman Studies by offering four key advantages: (1) the ability to deal with emergent properties in complex Roman systems; (2) the means to formally specify theories about past Roman phenomena; (3) the power to test aspects of these theories as hypotheses using formal modelling approaches; and (4) the capacity to do all of this in a transparent, reproducible, and cumulative scientific framework. We present a ten-point manifesto that articulates arguments for the more common use in Roman Studies of perspectives, concepts and tools from the broader field of complexity science, which are complementary to empirical inductive approaches. There will be a need for constant constructive collaboration between Romanists with diverse fields of expertise in order to usefully embed complexity science and formal modelling in Roman Studies.

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Evolving settlement patterns, spatial interaction and the socio-political organisation of late Prepalatial south-central Crete

Cited by 23 publications

References 25 publications

Was Thebes Necessary? Contingency in Spatial Modeling

Was Thebes Necessary? Contingency in Spatial Modeling

Modelling terrestrial route networks to understand inter-polity interactions (southern Etruria, 950-500 BC)

Formal Modelling Approaches to Complexity Science in Roman Studies: A Manifesto

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