Socio-Material Archaeological Networks at Çatalhöyük a Community Detection Approach

Abstract

Vast in scale and densely inhabited, Late Neolithic Near Eastern megasites have been variously considered in relation to urbanity. Often viewed as failed experiments on the path to proper urbanism or proto-urban sites, these settlements reveal few signs of hierarchical social stratification despite their large size; as such, they represent a challenge for the understanding of early processes of community formation and social integration. Drawing upon a wide range of data and using socio-material network analysis as a methodological tool, this paper explores the way the late Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük was organized internally and specifically the way individual houses were embedded in the wider social fabric of the site. This study sheds light on the nature of the networks of social engagement and affiliation that emerge in the Holocene within large early agricultural communities and the way such networks were manifested.

Digging the topology of rock art in northwestern Patagonia

“…The application of network analysis to the rock art database of northern Patagonia brings new insight in two important ways. Firstly, we want to highlight the methodological aspect of community detection as a formal method to identify possible anthropological and archaeological processes at different spatial scales [12,14]. This methodological innovation allows us to visualize and discriminate clusters of sites and motifs in a suprarregional scale, which is not a common approach in rock art studies of Patagonia.…”

“…The resulting division into communities revealed three dominant modular structures across the entire period, with strong spatial and temporal significance. Later, during the review process of the present work, an additional paper appeared, applying the same methodology of community detection [14], also cited above.…”

Breaking continuity? Site formation and temporal depth at Çatalhöyük and Tell Sabi Abyad

“…However, recent research at Çatalhöyük East has begun to appreciate the importance of separate sub-mounds. Excavations on the northern and southern sub-mounds have identified a number of material-culture differences (Mazzucato 2019;Mazzucato et al forthcoming), and it seems that the northern sub-mound was abandoned in the later phases of the site while the southern sub-mound continued in use (Farid et al forthcoming). Recent excavations under the direction of Çiler Çilingiroğlu have confirmed the late Neolithic date of the occupation on a low eastern sub-mound (Çilingiroğlu personal communication, August 2019).…”

“…At the house scale, continuity can be seen as crucial in providing temporal depth as delayed-return systems became increasingly prevalent in the Neolithic of southwest Asia (Banning 1998;Hodder 2007a;2019). The long house histories of Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük (Duru 2018;Hodder 2018) have become emblematic of continuous habitation in the Neolithic of southwest Asia, particularly in central Anatolia (Özbaşaran 2011;Brami et al 2016;Baird et al 2017).…”

Reconstructing mesolithic social networks in the Iberian Peninsula using ornaments

“…The number of studies on past population social networks has risen sharply in recent years (Peeples 2019), as is visible in the publication of specialised books (Knappett 2011), edited volumes (Knappett 2013;Brughmans et al 2016), or journal special issues (Collar et al 2015;Evans and Felder 2016). The potential of this methodological approach is illustrated by the wide range of case studies, topics and research questions to which network analysis has recently been applied: the detection of communities at Çatalhöyük (Mazzucato 2019); the emergence of inequality in Maya settlements (Thompson et al 2021); the structure of Clovis social networks (Buchanan et al 2019); or the rates of adoption and diffusion of innovation (Kandler and Caccioli 2016).…”