Connecting Communities in Archaic Greece
Exploring Economic and Political Networks through Data Modelling

Employs experimental data modelling on archaeological data to reveal new patterns about the seventh and sixth centuries BC.

Michael Loy (Author)

9781009343817, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 July 2023

300 pages, 35 b/w illus. 30 colour illus. 10 maps
28 x 19 x 2.3 cm, 0.664 kg

This is a new history of Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries BC written for the twenty-first century. It brings together archaeological data from over 100 years of 'Big Dig' excavation in Greece, employing experimental data analysis techniques from the digital humanities to identify new patterns about Archaic Greece. By modelling trade routes, political alliances, and the formation of personal- and state-networks, the book sheds new light on how exactly the early communities of the Aegean basin were plugged into one another. Returning to the long-debated question of 'what is a polis?', this study also challenges Classical Archaeology more generally: that the discipline has at its fingertips significant datasets that can contribute to substantive historical debate -and that what can be done for the next generation of scholarship is to re-engage with old material in a new way.

1. Introduction
2. Economic networks: the transport of heavy freight
3. Economic networks
commodities and semi-luxuries
4. Entangled networks: the transfer of technical knowledge
5. Political networks: expressions of political affiliation
6. Political networks: state alliance and amphiktyonies
7. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK]