CFP deadline 30 April

Organizers:

• Paolo Cimadomo, University of Haifa (cimadomopaolo@gmail.com)
• Maria Carmela Schisani, University of Naples ‘Federico II’ (schisani@unina.it)
• David Zbíral, Masaryk University (david.zbiral@mail.muni.cz)

Over the past few years, network analysis has emerged as a powerful tool for exploring economic, social, cultural, and religious aspects of the past world. Both archaeological and historical data sources offer intriguing challenges and opportunities for network analysts and network scientists, and a growing number of studies have demonstrated the potential of network research to inform and reshape our perspectives on the human past.

This session aims to build on this momentum by bringing together empirical, methodological, and theoretical presentations that use formal methods and/or build upon theoretical foundations of network analysis to shed light on historical and archaeological phenomena. Topics may include the analysis of past networks (social, infrastructural, semantic, etc.), changes in historical networks over time, and the collection of network data from various historical sources, including textual sources, artifacts, and material culture. We also welcome contributions that address incomplete, missing, uncertain, and fuzzy data, and explore the extraction of networks from historical texts and the semantic network analysis of historical sources. Other potential topics of interest include migration, transportation, interpersonal relations, economy from a network perspective, conflicts and conflict-solving, kinship, religious, intellectual, and scientific networks of the past, and diffusion processes.

Through this session, we aim to promote interdisciplinary contacts and encourage collaboration between researchers from different fields who approach past phenomena using methods derived from network analysis or network science. By sharing novel findings and approaches, we hope to facilitate the application of network analysis in historical and archaeological research, and to deepen our understanding of the dynamics and interconnections that have shaped the human past.

The abstract is, as usual, quite inclusive, so please do consider your participation. EUSN is generally a great occasion to get the feeling of up-to-date topics and approaches and get loads of inspiration for our work on historical networks.

The conference is taking place in Ljubljana, 4-8 September 2023. The conference website is: https://eusn2023.org/

Submissions are due 30 Apr 2023 and are done through the conference website – be sure to select “Networks in history and archaeology” as the panel.

We hope to see many of you in Ljubljana this September!