Inferring the intensity of Social Network from radiocarbon dated Bronze Age archaeological contexts

This paper presents the design of a Social Network Model used to explore a regional scale network of interaction in LBA-Early Iron Ages. We intend to investigate how raw material and technological information flows may have influenced economical exchange and social interaction through time.

To define these networks of interaction we use a dataset composed of more than 1500 georeferenced and radiocarbon dated archaeological contexts of a period between the Early Bronze Age and the first Iron Age (1800-750BC) from an area including the North-East of Iberian Peninsula, Southern France, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Southern Germany. Two different networks can be built from this data: one relating each site with each nearest neighbor in space and time, and another built on the bases of similarity distance (material culture).

Our aim is to analyze the dynamical nature of those networks and explore two alternative hypotheses: demic processes and cultural transmission mechanisms to understand the birth-growth-death of dynamic links between the nodes of the network in a one millennium trajectory.