Community structure of copper supply networks in the prehistoric Balkans: An independent evaluation of the archaeological record from the 7th to the 4th millennium BC

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel network analysis method to identify community structures in prehistoric Balkan copper societies, revealing significant social and spatial patterns over 3000 years through chemical data analysis.

Contribution

The paper presents an innovative modularity maximization approach to analyze archaeological data, enabling independent evaluation of prehistoric social networks without relying on traditional archaeological classifications.

Findings

Identified three dominant community structures in copper societies.

Revealed social relations as crucial as physical proximity.

Method produces meaningful models of human interaction independent of archaeological assumptions.

Abstract

Complex networks analyses of many physical, biological and social phenomena show remarkable structural regularities, yet, their application in studying human past interaction remains underdeveloped. Here, we present an innovative method for identifying community structures in the archaeological record that allow for independent evaluation of the copper using societies in the Balkans, from c. 6200 to c. 3200 BC. We achieve this by exploring modularity of networked systems of these societies across an estimated 3000 years. We employ chemical data of copper-based objects from 79 archaeological sites as the independent variable for detecting most densely interconnected sets of nodes with a modularity maximization method. Our results reveal three dominant modular structures across the entire period, which exhibit strong spatial and temporal significance. We interpret patterns of copper supply among prehistoric societies as reflective of social relations, which emerge as equally important as physical proximity. Although designed on a variable isolated from any archaeological and spatiotemporal information, our method provides archaeologically and spatiotemporally meaningful results. It produces models of human interaction and cooperation that can be evaluated independently of established archaeological systematics, and can find wide application on any quantitative data from archaeological and historical record.