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Tracing

Networks

The research programme

investigates the network of contacts across and beyond the Mediterranean region, between the late bronze age and the late classical period (c.1500-c.200 BCE) by interrogating material objects

seven archaeological case studies fully integrated with computer science projects

programme sets technological networks in their greater social, economic and political contexts to expand our understanding of wider cultural developments

these networks from the past can help us devise new and more effective ways of transmitting knowledge and information in our digital world

Tracing Networks

How does technical knowledge move from one person/group/society to another?

How do people choose which particular knowledge to use from the repertoire available?

In what kinds of contexts does innovation appear?

Tracing NetworksThe concepts of chaîne opératoire and cross-craft interaction allow us to interweave technologies and their social meanings in studying networks of crafts-people in the past and in proposing new methodologies for developing production-aware service networks in global computing.

Archaeologists study a wide range of material objects. . By tracking them at every stage of their production, distribution, use, and consumption across a large geographical region, over a long time period, we can trace the links between the people who made, used, and taught others to make them.

Through these objects we can follow the ways in which technical knowledge was embedded within a wide variety of intricate socio-political, economic and cultural networks across the Mediterranean region and beyond.

Exploring these networks through

archaeology allows us to develop a powerful metaphor for new computational models in which code and data mobility allow for software components to establish dynamic networks of production and distribution of services according to the availability of resources and opportunities for trade.

That is, there is an opportunity for the chaîn opératoire of socio-economic models to be reflected in new computing paradigms so as to improve performance, resource consumption and distribution efficiency.

Networks of Technical Knowledge

The Bigger QuestionsArchaeologists collect and organise data from the past to gather knowledge about how societies came to operate the way they do, helping us address pressing questions and issues we face today:• How have individuals or groups of

individuals learnt how to organise themselves?

• Why did some prosper while others collapsed?

• What are the dynamics of power, influence and the exchange of knowledge?

• In what kinds of contexts does innovation appear?

Computer scientists devise new methods and techniques for creating systems that can exploit the power of computing devices and communication networks:• How to create awareness of network

conditions and location of resources to optimise the provision of services in the new global computing environments?

In order to be able to program systems efficiently, these methods need to reflect our own culture and practices:• What can we learn from the way our

society came to use resources and respond to changing production and distribution conditions?

Technologies in social contexts

Two key concepts• Chaîne opératoire • Cross-Craft Interaction

allow us to develop comparisons across

cultures and over time, and across disciplines

to set technologies in their social contexts

to explore networks of knowledge

Craft traditions can be viewed as tools of communication, linked to identities

Chaîne opératoire

Tracking all technological and social elements of the production, distribution and consumption of a specific commodity in relation to each other

The ways in which multiple crafts studied together have a technological and social impact on each other via human interaction

We interrogate objects through scientific analyses

Cross-craft interaction

New computing paradigms for dynamic networks today

Resource-aware applications

Phoenicians, Greeks and

indigenous groups

Networks over time: Bronze Age, Iron Age,

Classical 1500-200 BC

Networks of everyday objects and their makers

Networks extending beyond the

Mediterranean

COLLABORATIVE

INFRASTRUCTURE

METHODOLOGY

DATA

BRYSBAERT Crafts at Tiryns

HARDING Salt and amber

VAN DOMMELEN Punic ceramics

FOXHALL Loomweights

FIADEIRO & TUOSTO

Global ubiquitous computing

WHITBREAD Lefkandi pottery

HASELGROVECoinage

REBAY-SALISBURYHuman representations

PM

PI: Foxhall

RF Project ManagerRebay-Salisbury

Research TechnicianAlonzo Lopez

Haselgrove

Fiadeiro/Tuosto

Van Dommelen

Harding

Whitbread

RA: Krmnicek

RA: Strack

RA: Uckelmann

RA: Roppa

RA: Quercia

RA: Vetters

RA: BocchiRA: Hong

financial

communication

management

Administrative structureAdvisory board

Brysbaert (Athens)

Weaving Relationships: loom weights and cross-cultural networks

Loom weights, made in cooking pot and plain ware fabrics, from classical Greek farmhouse, Metaponto, probably for making industrial textiles

Loom weights marked with fingerprintsLoomweights

in indigenous Italic fabric

from Greek farm site

from native grave

4th c. BC loom weight, 6th c. BC stamp, Metaponto, Italy. Matches 6th c. lead figurine from Sparta, Greece.

Punic-style footprint stamp

Culinary relationships: cooking wares and cross-cultural networks

Menelaion: Late Bronze Age Handmade Burnished cooking ware

Bronze Age to Iron Age transition at Lefkandi: diverse raw materials reflect differences in production technologies, and the consumption of both local and imported ceramics for utilitarian purposes (including cooking)

Menelaion: Typical Late Bronze Age cooking fabric with quartz and limestone

Menelaion: Handmade Burnished Ware with grog (pottery inclusions), atypical for Greek ceramic technology at this time

Under the microscope

End of the Greek Bronze Age: local adaptation following the collapse of palatial societies or foreign intrusion represented in cooking ware production technologies at the Menelaion and Lefkandi?

Cross-Craft Interaction (CCI) in the Bronze Age East Mediterranean

Egyptian blue pigment, coloured by copper ore – metals

Murex shells in plaster – purple dye – also used for textiles

Pigment production →ceramics, paintings, textiles,…

People’s traces in their objects – fingernails

Range of CCI’s:• Ideas/styles• Knowledge• Procurement time/places• Skills• Techniques• Materials• Facilities/equipment• Marketing strategies

Social Chaîne OpératoireMaterial Chaîne Opératoire

Salt of the earth: the exotic and the everyday in Bronze Age Europe

AMBER

SALT

Baltic amber in Greece

Amber from Bernstorf (Bavaria) – genuine Linear B symbols?

Salt was crucial for daily life but not everyone had access to suitable sources

Many commodities were moved around the Bronze Age world, but the mechanisms of this movement are still largely unknown. The data gathered by this project will provide answers to this problem.

Handmade pottery in Greece, derived from the Balkans?

Social and cultural networks? Tarentum (I) coin and Gundestrup (DK) cauldron

Massalia’s economic role linking Europe & the Mediterranean

Spreadingtechnologies:Hubbed coin die copying Macedonian Phillipus

Political links

New maritimeconnectionsdepicted

Coins and ConquestFlamininusAV 197 BC

Mint condition: coinage and the development of technological, economic and social networks

Colonial Traditions:Ceramic Production in Punic Sardinia, Ibiza and Sicily

Punic amphorae produced in west central Sardinia

Punic and Greek amphorae

produced in Sicily

Phoenician and Nuragic (indigenous Sardinian) pottery from central Sardinia

An indigenous Nuraghe settlement site

Indigenous pottery from Sicily

Human representations, identities and social relations in the Late Bronze and Iron Age of Central Europe

Art evokes social

expectations

The lyre player in bronze and pottery, in different decoration techniques

Bologna-Certosa (Italy) Kleinklein (Austria) Reichersdorf (Austria) Schirndorf (Germany)

Identity is how people see themselves and their social surroundings

Kuffern (Austria)

Hirschlanden (Germany) Frög (Austria)

Mediterranean links

FIADEIRO & TUOSTO

Global ubiquitous computing

Social and economic metaphors have been a key factor for the success and uptake of software development techniques: in object-oriented

programming, components cooperate through clientship in the same way as a village economy relies on direct interactions among people.

in service-oriented computing, components use the dynamicity of web-based networks to shop around for the best service that they can get, as in the global economy.

New modes of computation based on code and data mobility over wide area networks, are providing the means for components to move in order to take advantage of: resources available in

other nodes to improve the quality of provided services

faster or more reliable distribution channels enabled by better connectivity

What is a good metaphor for these new modalities of interaction and production?

What is the chaîne opératoire of global computing?

A new computing paradigm based on resource-aware, competitive, opportunistic and selfish forms of computation and self-organisation.

to provide a logical infrastructure and support classification and analysis/interpretation of very large amounts of data

using mash up-technology to get the best out of databases in different formats

this environment should ensure future collaboration of teams and enable future research by others

Working environment: ontology and tools

The ontology of concepts (based on CIDOC-CRM) is being defined and will offer a uniform representation of data and findings of the archaeological projects through which unforeseen relationships among heterogeneous datasets may emerge semi-automatically

Tracing NetworksAn opportunity to fund innovative and exciting research

that crosses established academic boundaries and UKRC divisions

The data and collaborative infrastructure will have the potential to change radically current methodologies for handling and analysing large data sets in archaeological studies and will outlive the project, allowing other communities to have access to, benefit from, and contribute to our findings, thus expanding our understanding of the wider cultural developments that frame the way our societal networks evolve.

What we are proposing is not “normal science”: we are taking to the limit a notion of network based on production, distribution and consumption of commodities, which we use to expand our understanding of wider cultural developments in human civilisation and, at the same time, to start shaping the organisation of computing networks of the future.

Academic outputs will include publications and presentations at international events, as well as process calculi, mathematical models, and a methodology for the new computing paradigm. We will also train young researchers in an interdisciplinary area that offers the promise of better and fruitful interactions between the sciences and the humanities.

Ann Brysbaert & Melissa VettersDepartment of Museum Studies University of Leicester

Peter van Dommelen & Andrea RoppaDepartment of Archaeology University of Glasgow

José Fiadeiro & Yi HongDepartment of Computer Science University of Leicester

Lin Foxhall & Alessandro QuerciaSchool of Archaeology and Ancient History University of Leicester

Anthony Harding & Marion UckelmannDepartment of Archaeology University of Exeter

Colin Haselgrove & Stefan KrmnicekSchool of Archaeology and Ancient History University of Leicester

Katharina Rebay-SalisburySchool of Archaeology and Ancient History University of Leicester

Emilio Tuosto & Laura BocchiDepartment of Computer Science University of Leicester

Ian Whitbread & Sara StrackSchool of Archaeology and Ancient History University of Leicester