Hi all,

below an announcement by the amazingly active Tom Brughmans:

 

We would like to bring a session on archaeological network science at the 2015 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) meeting in Siena (Italy) to your attention. We welcome papers describing archaeological applications of network science, with a particular focus on the treatment of space and time in these applications. Please find the abstract below for more details. The call for papers for CAA2015 is now open, the submission deadline is 20 November 2014. The full list of CAA2015 sessions can be viewed here. Papers can be submitted here.We will also host a practical workshop at CAA2015: Introduction to exploratory network analysis for archaeologists using Visone (abstract below). Registration for this workshop will open at a later date. Geographical and temporal network science in archaeology Tom Brughmans and Daniel Weidele Formal network techniques are becoming an increasingly common addition to the archaeologist’s methodological toolbox. Archaeologists have adopted these techniques mainly from the fields of social network analysis, physics and mathematics, where they have been developed and applied for decades. However, network science techniques for the analysis or visualisation of geographical and long-term temporal phenomena have seen far less development than those for social and technological phenomena. Conversely, archaeology has a long tradition of studying long-term change of socio-cultural systems and spatial phenomena, a research focus and tradition that is a direct consequence of the nature of archaeological data and our ambition to use it as proxy evidence for past human behaviour. We believe this spatial and temporal research focus so common in archaeology could inspire the development of innovative spatial and temporal network science techniques.
This session welcomes archaeological applications of formal network science techniques. It particularly encourages elaboration on the geographical and temporal aspects of applications. What are the implications of working on large time-scales for the use of network science techniques and the interpretation of their outputs? How can the study of long-term change of social systems inspire the development of innovative network science techniques? What advantages do geographical network approaches offer over other spatial analysis techniques in archaeology? How can the long tradition of studying spatial phenomena in archaeology inspire the development of innovative network science techniques? Introduction to exploratory network analysis for archaeologists using Visone Daniel Weidele and Tom Brughmans Network science techniques offer archaeologists the ability to manage, visualise, and analyse network data. Within different archaeological research contexts, network data can be used to represent hypothesised past social networks, geographically embedded networks like roads and rivers, the similarity of site assemblages, and much more.
A large number of software programs is available to work with network data. Visone is one of them and offers a number of advantages:
• Free to use for research purposes
• A user-friendly interactive graphical user interface
• Innovative network visualisations
• Exporting publication-quality raster and vector files
• The incorporation of statistical modelling techniques
This workshop introduces the basics of network data management, visualisation and analysis with Visone through practical examples using archaeological research questions and datasets. The workshop is aimed at archaeologists with no required previous experience with network science.
Participants should bring a laptop with Visone installed (download Visone: http://visone.info/ )
Maximum 20 participants.