Welcome

THE MSC DISSERTATION IS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE! [Scribd] [PDF]

For reconstructing the past, archaeologists rely on material that has been buried for decades, centuries or even millennia. Interpreting such objects is obviously not an easy task: they were used by people in the past to serve a certain purpose, they were discarded or reused for whatever reason, they were subject to natural and human disturbances, some of these objects were excavated while others remain undiscovered, and finally a select few were published through various media.

This project is all about acknowledging that such selection processes took place, and trying to identify them as clearly as possible. We believe that the relationships between the material remains, their context in whatever sense of the word, holds a crucial clue for reaching this aim. Throughout the project network analysis has been applied to an archaeological dataset to identify and explain its complex structure. We have argued that archaeologists should first be aware of the nature and limitations of their data, before it can be used to understand the past.

This website contains the results of the project. It lists all networks of co-presence per 25 year period, and provides distance networks based on the hypothesis of shortest distance trade routes. These routes and our proposed model are also visible on an interactive map of the Mediterranean and in Google Earth.

You can find out more about the project on our blog.