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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