Historical network analysis

The paper discusses the potential of Historical Network Research (HNR) in Medieval Studies with a special focus on the problem of the availability of sources. In particular, it identifies three research fields in which HNR will be a most promising approach to provide valuable new insights into the mechanisms of medieval society and politics: genealogy, prosopography of clerical and academic elites and political history.

in: M. Düring / U. Eumann u.a. (Hgg.), Handbuch Historische Netzwerkforschung. Grundlagen und Anwendungen (Schriften des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts Essen zur Methodenforschung, 1), Berlin u.a. 2016, S. 85-99.

„Bertholds Kandidatur hat bei der Genese des Thronstreits möglicherweise eine nicht geringe Rolle gespielt. Natürlich ist eine solche ´Was wäre wenn´-Erwägung spekulativ. Ihr Reiz liegt aber darin, dass wir hier gewissermaßen einen politischen ´Schmetterlingseffekt´ erkennen können, wie er in komplexen Akteursnetzwerken zuweilen auftreten muss. Innerhalb eines passenden politischen Gesamtszenarios können relativ kleine Ursachen große Wirkungen haben. Es erscheint faszinierend, die Verstrickung der Zähringer in das komplexe Ereignisgewebe von 1198 zu beobachten und die Episode ihrer Thronkandidatur nicht einfach als überflüssiges, letztlich belangloses Element der Erzählung zu betrachten.“

Nearest neighbor settlement relationships are methodically analyzed in network connection diagrams with the use of Delaunay triangulation in this GIS-based study. Probable routes by land and river are calculated with lost cost path analysis on the basis of digital surface models and compared with the local archaeological record.
In contrast to the neighboring Roman Empire, no centralized sites in the sense of transregionally significant settlements are definitively verifiable outside of the Limes Germanicus in the research area at the middle Main River. Some fortified hill forts, however, do exist. Starting in late antiquity these sites were temporarily occupied in times of internal and external conflict. Hill forts in the Babaricum were, without exception, sited on spurs at the Main or its tributaries. The course of the Main River constituted the primary transport route for the Romans into the Babaricum, although clear evidence of ship or harbor facilities has yet to be discovered for this period.
The well-known hierarchical settlement and road system in the Roman Empire is not apparent in the Babaricum although numerous sunken roads in multiple path networks were discernible. Precise dating of these features to the Roman Iron Age or Migration Period has not been possible due to heavy soil erosion in the vicinity. Particular stretches of this network of paths were only seasonally in use depending on weather conditions and soil moisture, and so it is not realistic to discuss roadways as usable year-round in the Babaricum as they are in the Roman Empire. Some of these paths were fortified, although the dating of these fortifications is not possible due to the continued use of some of these pathways into the Early Modern Period.
Many Germanic settlement sites were in continuous use throughout the Roman Iron Age and even into the Migration Period. With the beginning of the latter in the late 4th and 5th centuries AD, many settlements at the middle Main were abandoned and few new ones were founded. Due to difficulties in precise dating it is not possible to confirm whether settlement intensity, having continuously increased throughout the Roman Iron Age, also increased in the Early Migration Period. Through the identification of new sites, however, and comprehensive investigation of previously known ones from the Late Roman Iron Age, extensive changes to settlement structure in the Migration Period can be determined. The revolutionary processes of the Migration Period also led to drastic changes in settlement structure in other inner barbarian territories. The 5th to 6th centuries AD constituted a significant transitional phase in Germania libera.

This e-book is a collection of papers focussing on the discursive dimension of the 'eastern enlargement' of the European Union, relying on lessons from post-colonial scholarship, world-systems analysis and critical race studies. The empirical material comes from discourse of 'eastern enlargement' process in the late 1990s-early 2000s .

The modelling and visualisation of networks is based on the material in: M. Mullett, Theophylact of Ochrid. Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop. Birmingham 1997.

The first graph is a visualisation of the connections between letters in localities between which these letters were exchanged (" 2mode network").

The second graph is a visualisation of the weighted network of localities on the basis of Theophylact´s correspondence; two localities are connected if letters of Theophylact were exchanged between them. Links are scaled according to the number of letters within Theophylact´s collection documenting exchanges between them.

The third graph visualises these connections between localities on a map. Links are again scaled according to the number of letters within Theophylact´s collection documenting exchanges between them. The size of nodes is scaled according to their number of connections within the network ("degree").

The fourth graph is a "zoom" into these geographical visualisation of the network for the Western Balkans; links are again scaled according to the number of letters within Theophylact´s collection documenting exchanges between them.

For the localisation of sites within the historical region of Macedonia cf. also the upcoming volumes on Macedonia (Southern Part) by Peter Soustal and on Macedonia (Northern Part) by Mihailo Popovic within the series "Tabula Imperii Byzantini" (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/imafo/die-abteilungen/byzanzforschung/communities-landscapes/historische-geographie/)

For any further questions, please contact [email protected].

This paper categories and compares various works done in the field of social networking for covert networks. It uses criminal network analysis to categorize various approaches in social engineering like dynamic network analysis, destabilizing covert networks, counter terrorism, key player, subgroup detection and homeland security. The terrorist network has been taken for study because of its network of individuals who spread from continents to continents and have an effective influence of their ideology throughout the globe. It also presents various metrics based on which the centrality of nodes in the graphs could be identified and it's illustrated based on a synthetic dataset for 9/11 attack. This paper will also discuss various open problems in this area.

During Sigismund of Luxembourg’s reign, many Florentine citizens were drawn to work in the Kingdom of Hungary for various economic and political reasons. Analyzing the social network  of these politicians, merchants, artisans, royal officers, dignitaries of the Church, and noblemen is the primary objective of this book. The Florentines’ network in Hungary, discussed in the book, was concentrated at its centre on one catalytic figure: the Florentine-born Pippo Scolari and his most intimate male relatives. I believe that these three men, Pippo, his youngest brother, Matteo, and their cousin, Andrea Scolari, had the most significant influence on Florentines’ migration to the Kingdom of Hungary during the first three decades of the fifteenth century. This concentrated network structure was a result of the centralized political system in the Kingdom of Hungary, dominated by the royal court and its members. Pippo, as baron of the aula regis, obtained a social status, incomparable to those of his Florentine contemporaries, which allowed him to elevate others in his network.
The success of the network can be seen in the various ways in which its members were connected to each other and especially to the centre of the network. Some of these individuals developed weak ties among each other, characterized by a single type relation to one of the key figures of the Scolari family; meanwhile others established strong ties with them by multiple links of kinship, marriage, politics, neighbourhood, and business partnerships. I shall refer to members of this network as ‘friends’, defining in this way the existing personal connections set among them by their common political interests, neighbourhood proximities, marriage alliances, kinship ties, patronages, and company partnerships.

In the literature, there has been much research dedicated to simple historical networks and how they affect various public and private spheres. More rare are those historical case studies, which allow us to trace back the impact of a multiple set of relations. In this book, I shall look both descriptively at patterns of connectivity and causally at the impacts of this complex network on cultural exchanges of various types, among these migration, commerce, diplomacy, and artistic exchange. In the setting of a case study, this book should best be thought of as an attempt to cross the boundaries that divide political, economic, social, and art history so that they simultaneously figure into a single integrated story of Florentine history and development.

The summer 2022 issue of the British magazine ANTIQVVS features an interview with myself on the use of networkanalysis, complexity theory and digital humanities for the study of the ancient and medieval past: https://www.antiqvvs-magazine.com/

The primary aim of the author’s dissertation was to create a regional prosopography of the New Kingdom, which is not limited to specific groups of persons, but rather illuminates all identifiable social strata of the Memphite region. In order to establish a prosopography that is as complete and representative as possible the available source material was compiled. In the course of the work, a total of approximately 5,000 data sets have been recorded in a relational database model created especially for this purpose. The main focus of the investigation was focused on prosopographic data, which was used as a criterion for the identification of individual persons on various types of objects. In addition, prosopographical data is relational data that describes the interconnections and relations of individual persons who can be assigned to a network of persons. The amount of data collected within the data compilation had not yet been processed for New Kingdom Memphis and could therefore be used as a basis for additional quantitative analyses and digital processing. Due to the large quantity and complexity of the prosopographic data, the presentation of the source material will not be provided in form of a printed catalogue. Instead, a searchable web database was created, which is available under the following link: https://www.prosopographia-memptihica.com

الملخـص: كان الهـدف الأساسـى مـن رسـالة الدكتـوراه الخاصـة بالمؤلـف هـو إنشـاء قاعـدة بيانـات بروسـبوجرافيك إقليميـة من عصـر الدولـة الحديثة، لا تقتصـر علـى مجموعـة معينـة مـن الأشـخاص، بـل تسـلط الضـوء علـى جميـع الطبقـات الاجتماعيـة المعروفـة مـن منطقة منـف. ومن أجل إنشـاء هـذا الأمـر بشـكل كامـل ونموذجـى بقـدر الإمـكان، تم تجميـع المـواد المتاحـة. وخـال فتـرة المشـروع، تم تسـجيل مـا يقـرب مـن 5000 مجموعـة بيانات فـىنمـوذجقاعـدةبيانـاتتمإنشـاؤهاخصيصـًالهـذاالغـرض.وكانالتركيـزالرئيسـىللمشـروععلـىتلـكالمعلومـاتالتىتتعلـقبالبروسـبوجرافيك، والتـى اسـتخدمت كمعيـار لتحديـد الأشـخاص مـن خـال أنـواع مختلفـة مـن الأدوات. بالإضافـة إلـى ذلـك، فـإن البيانـات البروسـبوجرافيكية مـاهـى إلا بيانـات نسـبية تصـف الروابـط والعاقـات بـن الأفـراد الذيـن يمكـن تخصيصهـم لمجموعـة معينـة مـن الأشـخاص. ويجـب التنويـه إلـى أن كميـة البيانـات التـى تم جمعهـا خـال مرحلـة جمـع المعلومـات ليسـت معالجـة بعـد لعصـر الدولـة الحديثـة فـى منـف، وبالتالـى يمكـن أن تسـتخدم كأســاس لتحليــل إضافــى كمــى ومعالجــة رقميــة. ونظــرًا لكميــة البيانــات البروســبوجرافيكية الضخمــة، لــن يتــم تقــديم مصــدر البيانــات فــى شـكل كتالـوج مطبـوع، ولكـن تم إنشـاء قاعـدة بيانـات قابلـة للبحـث، وهـى متاحـة تحـت الرابـط التالـى:https://www.prosopographia-memphitica.com
الكلمات الدالة: جبانة منف ــ الدولة الحديثة ــ بروسبوجرافيك ــ تحليل الشبكة الاجتماعية ــ قاعدة بيانات نصوص الأنساب ــ سقارة

In this blog post, I plot a network using the data from the Innovating Knowledge project. The network consist of 279 nodes corresponding to manuscripts transmitting the most important medieval encyclopaedia, the Etymologiae, and 1047 edges corresponding to innovative features shared by these manuscripts. The resulting graph shows how widespread certain innovations were, and how particular clusters of manuscripts sharing a specific innovation (coloured in the graph) do or do not overlap. The graph consist of 40 separate components, of which one is central.

This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the archaeological record. Methodologically, it merges spatial and social network analyses to promote a geosocial archaeology. The articles create a counter-narrative to environmentally and economically focused investigations that can fail to explain how and why societies in the Southwest often reorganize horizontally. The first article uses geosocial networks, which I argue represent memory maps, to reveal that people in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100 ̶ 1300 employed the socially important, and sophisticated, act of forgetting. A community level, settlement pattern analysis demonstrates similarities between the arrangement of Gallina and Basketmaker-era settlements. These historically situated settlement structures, combined with acts of forgetting, were used by Gallina region residents to institute and maintain a horizontally organized social movement that was likely aimed at rejecting the hierarchical social changes in the Four Corners region. The second article proposes that as ideologically charged material goods are consumed, fissures within past ideological landscapes are exposed and that these fissures can reveal acts of resistance in the archaeological past. It also contends that social and environmental variables need to be combined for these acts of resistance to be correctly interpreted. The third article applies many of the ideas outlined in the second article to a case study in the Greater Southwest during A.D. 1200–1450. Fractures in the ideological landscape demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon was a religious social movement formed around, and successful because of, its populist nature. Based on variations in how the Salado ideology interacted with contemporaneous hierarchical and non-hierarchical religious and political organizations it is probable that the Salado social movement formed around desires for the open access to religious knowledge.

Although the scientific discussion about the site and its monuments forms an independent research focus, the archaeological legacy of the Memphite necropolis of the second millennium BC remained uninvestigated for a very long time. The Memphite elite tombs of the New Kingdom (1539–1077 BC), which have been discovered and excavated during the past 45 years, eventually revealed much prosopographical data. Relevant texts and inscriptions are to be found not only on the walls of the tombs but also on different types of objects that were part of the tombs’ original equipment or decoration (e.g. coffins, stelae, statues, canopic jars, shabtis and decorated limestone blocks). By evaluating and comparing all prosopographical data, the Prosopographia Memphitica Project aims to attain a Memphite prosopography for the New Kingdom, which is intended to illuminate all identifiable social classes of the Memphite society and its relational patterns using historical network analysis.

Although there is not too much primary data concerning Christianization of the Roman Empire, demographical, ecologic and economic estimations informed by social-scientific and cognitive theorizing enable us to evaluate possible trajectories of this process (Stark 1996, 2006; Hopkins 1998). Adding into the picture the estimations concerning seasoneal costs of travelling through the Roman empire around the year 300 CE (Scheidel 2014), this paper aims to replicate this process in an artificial computational environment while using the method of agent-based modelling. On the contrary to the equotion-based approach adopted by Stark and others, the agent-based modelling does enable us also to implement the factors which could confound the proposed process of gradual Christianization (e.g. massive conversions or a decline of Christian population after the periods of persecutions) and to consider their influence on the overall process. Further, potential extensions of the model is discussed, and, finally, its potential for the study of diffusion of early Christian religious innovations is introduced.

In the field of Byzantine studies, epistolography was the first phenomenon ever to be analysed within the framework of (social) network analysis in the pioneer study of Margaret Mullett on the letter collection of Metropolitan Theophylact of Ohrid in 1997. In these and other following studies, concepts reflecting on the qualitative character of social connections were more frequently used than quantitative tools of structural analysis.  Thus, the main aim of this chapter is the presentation of basic concepts of this aspect of network research and the demonstration of the application of some of these tools on a case study for Byzantine epistolography. At the same time, the potential for a future combination of structural and qualitative concepts of relational analysis for research in the field is outlined.

Published in: Women and Monasticism in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean: Decoding a Cultural Map, edited by Eleonora Kountoura Galake and Ekaterini Mitsiou. National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens 2019, pp. 349-364.

Also distributed by: https://history-bookstore.eie.en

Exchange in the Roman Mediterranean has often been described with general network terminology, but rarely have the formal methods or theory of network analysis been applied to the archaeological evidence for Roman maritime interaction. Using case studies around the island of Cyprus, this paper addresses how network approaches might inform analysis of seaborne economic and social connectivity at different scales across the ancient world. The locations of opportunistic ports, and the cargo sizes and approximate durations of journeys represented by shipwrecks provide parameters for characterizing network activity: in this case the networks that linked communities beyond the major coastal urban ports into a highly regionalized maritime economy. This approach to network activity defines and emphasizes a regional scale as distinct from both local and long-distance activity. It raises critical issues about the structure and functioning of networks in light of the socioeconomic conditions and logistics of ancient seafaring, and it provides a framework for investigating the development of markets in the Roman maritime economy. Rather than revealing a single expansive and well-integrated “trade network” across the Roman Mediterranean, the approach here suggests multiple discrete regional and interregional networks centered on distinct products, ships, distances, agents, communities, and economic mechanisms.

Preiser-Kapeller, J. (2020). The Ties that Do Not Bind. Group formation, polarization and conflict within networks of political elites in the medieval Roman Empire. Journal of Historical Network Research, 4, 298-324. https://doi.org/10.25517/jhnr.v4i0.81

This chapter aims at the exploration of concepts and methods of network and complexity theory as well as New Institutional Economics (NIE) for the analysis of the emergence of conflicts within ruling elites in pre-modern polities. From the point of view of NIE, Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast have pointed out the general structural weakness of pre-modern formations of power. This assumption will be tested against a comparative analysis of the structural and qualitative properties of elite networks, also in their temporal and spatial dynamics. The modelling of the relational web among elite members will also open a micro-perspective on the evolution and resilience of networks between actors within smaller groups and clusters in situations of conflict. Furthermore, it allows for a quantification of the size of conflicts within elite networks and the analysis of their temporal dynamics.

Selected bibliography on historical and archaeological network analysis, compiled for introductory workshops and course; besides historical and archaeological studies using concepts and tools of network theory, the focus is on introductory works and important methodological studies.

“Most cultural theorists saw network analysis as located squarely in the positivist camp, reducing cultural richness to 1s and 0s and lacking attention to processes of interpretation and meaning-construction.”; thus Ann Mische in 2011 summed up attitudes towards network analysis which are still strong also in many circles of historical studies.  Of course, these verdicts were not entirely unfounded, as Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin pointed out in 1994 in their influential paper on „Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency“: “despite its powerful conceptualization of social structure, network analysis as it has been developed to date has inadequately theorized the causal role of ideals, beliefs, and values, and of the actors that strive to realize them; as a result, it has neglected the cultural and symbolic moment in the very determination of social action.”  Although meanwhile various theoretical concepts and models of “relational sociology” have been developed , the cultural dimension is still underrepresented in many works of quantitatively oriented social and also historical network analysis. In this paper, I will present the explanatory value of some of these relational approaches to social reality for historical research and their combination with quantitative network analysis. For various case studies, the actual interplay between the structural and the cultural dimension of social, religious, economic, political or intellectual linkages between individuals, groups, communities, but also cultural concepts will be demonstrated.

""The aim of this project of the Division for Byzantine Research of the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is the integration, adaptation and further development of concepts and tools of network theory and complexity sciences for the analysis of Byzantium and the medieval Mediterranean and Near East. With the help of these instruments, social, economic, religious, political and intellectual entanglements between individuals, groups, communities, institutions, polities and localities as well as between societies and their environments and the dynamics of these phenomena in time and space are visualised and analysed in a new way in a qualitative and quantitative as well as comparative perspective. In this way, the actual complexity of pre-modern societies and the relevance of such research for the analysis of comparable complex interconnections in the contemporary globalised world are rendered visible.

The explanatory value of these new methods has been demonstrated by the Johannes Preiser-Kapeller with case studies for the Late Byzantine ecclesiastical, political and intellectual elites, processes of religious and ethnic transformations in the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean, the diplomatic and political entanglements of the Near East between 300 and 1200 CE and the complex dynamics of the Late Medieval “World Crisis” in a global comparative perspective. In the future, an application of the developed toolkit to other periods and regions of the medieval world and on phenomena of environmental history and global mobility is intended. Within the Division of Byzantine Research, the project is closely connected to the Edition of the Register of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (PRK) and the Prosopography of the Palaeologian Period (PLP) and cooperates with the HGIS-based approach of Mihailo Popović to the historical geography of Byzantium (TIB); cooperations have also been established with other projects of the Institute for Medieval Research, especially within the framework of the SFB “Visions of Community”.

Beyond the Austrian Academy, the project is cooperating with colleagues at leading institutions for complexity research and digital humanities in Austria and abroad, such as the Section for Science of Complex Systems (Medizinische Universität Wien), the Archaeological Computing Research Group at the School of Humanities, University of Southampton or the Centre for Network Sciences at the Central European University in Budapest.

Methodology:
We establish a “complex relational perspective” on historical and social phenomena, following the postulations of classics of social theory such as Norbert Elias, who stated already in 1965: “to study individuals first as isolates and to derive the figurations they form together from what they are without the patterns of their living together, is a confusion of thought, impeding the analysis of these figurations. (...) Individuals are always found in figurations and configurations of individuals are irreducible. To think of a single individual as if it originally were socially independent, or of individuals here and there regardless of their relations with each other, is a baseless starting point.” (Norbert ELIAS – John SCOTSON, Etablierte und Außenseiter, 1965, 72, 264-265.)
The already well-established concepts of network theory allow us to analyse and visualise interactions and connections between individuals, groups and institutions. Recent studies work mainly within the framework of quantitative network analysis, which concentrates on the construction of quantifiable network models (with nodes and ties or links) on the basis of relational data and on the mathematical analysis of these models with regard to their general structure and the differences between nodes and groups or clusters of nodes. But besides or in addition to quantitative analysis, the field of “relational sociology” has highlighted the more “qualitative” aspects of social networks with regard to their relevance for the embedding and even construction of identities and relationships. In recent studies on historical networks, we have attempted to combine both approaches.

Even more, in his book “Reassembling the social” (2005, p. 173), Bruno Latour, one of the proponents of Actor-Network-Theory, stated: “we have to lay continuous connections leading from one local interaction to the other places, times, and agencies through which a local site is made to do something. (…) If we do this, we will render visible the long chains of actors linking sites to one another without missing a single step. It might be empirically hard but we should not expect major theoretical hurdles.” For archaeological and historical studies, it does not only prove to be “empirically hard” to re-construct these connections “through which a local site is made to do something”; “major theoretical hurdles” have also appeared for attempts to combine the conceptual framework of Actor-Network-Theory, which due to its integration of the agency of humans as well as objects is of special appeal for archaeologists (cf. Carl KNAPPETT, An Archaeology of Interaction, 2011; Ian HODDER, Entangled. An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things, 2012), with more widely used tools of quantitative network analysis.

Our study aims at taking the task of a “re-assembling” of connections between individuals and objects, localities and times, serious by surveying these entanglements for various case studies, visualising them in multiplex network graphs and applying quantitative methods on them. For this purpose, we regard as “narratives of entanglements” not only written sources on the agencies and connections of individuals, but also assemblies of objects (such as a reliquary casket containing objects of veneration [imagined to come] from various times and localities [see below] or a ship wreck containing objects from various sites of production and trade). Thus, the aspects of bias and fragmentariness inherent in all forms of historical or archaeological evidence are taken into account and conceptualised within the well-established theoretical framework of narratology. In addition, this allows us to apply the concepts of “Quantitative Narrative Analysis” developed by Roberto FRANZOSI (cf. his book of the same title, 2010), who has already applied quantitative network analysis in order to visualise and quantify the underlying structure of relations between elements of a narrative.

As several studies have demonstrated, in pre-modern societies, most individuals were embedded in spatially limited networks of kinship and neighbourhood. At the same time, the emergence of close-knit clusters of nodes connected through “strong ties” of a high frequency of interaction and intimacy is more probable among individuals sharing important markers of identity such as kinship, religious believe or common language; in turn, communities tend to reproduce themselves in such networks of high density. Thus, we observe an interplay between structural (the density of social relations) and qualitative (the homogeneity of individuals) characteristics of social networks. Members of religious elites and nobilities, in contrast, often established highly selective and over-regional contacts for various political, familial or economic occasions (some of which with regard to frequency or intimacy could be considered as “weak”, but others also as “strong”) with their peers, which also crossed borders within and beyond cultural-religious frontiers. Yet, by “localising the global”, we demonstrate how such far reaching entanglements also affected spatially more localised individuals and groups.



http://www.oeaw.ac.at/imafo/die-abteilungen/byzanzforschung/communities-landscapes/historische-geographie/komplexitaet-netzwerke/
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In The Social World of the Babylonian Priest, Bastian Still presents a comprehensive study of the priestly community of Borsippa during the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian Empires (ca. 620-484 BCE). By examining patterns of marriage, landholding, moneylending, and friendship, he provides an intimate account of the daily life of the Babylonian priesthood beyond the temple walls and develops a more sophisticated understanding of the organisation of ancient Babylonian society as a whole. Combining the use of social network analysis, anthropological studies, and sociological concepts concerned with kinship, tie strength, social boundaries, and identity formation, Bastian Still’s interdisciplinary approach transcends the traditional boundary of cuneiform studies and enables the field of Assyriology to contribute to a more general socio-historical discourse.

Die "Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich" (im Folgenden "BMÖ") werden seit 1985 als jährlich erscheinende wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift von der "Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Mittelalterarchäologie" (ÖGM) herausgegeben. Entsprechend den statutengemäßen Vereinszielen dient die Zeitschrift der Präsentation und Verbreitung aktueller archäologischer Forschungsergebnisse mit einem zeitlichen Schwerpunkt von der Völkerwanderungszeit bis in das 19. Jahrhundert. Im Sinne der Historischen Archäologie sind die BMÖ auch offen für Forschungen zur zeitgeschichtlichen Archäologie. Auch rein methodologische Arbeiten ohne räumliche oder zeitliche Spezialisierung werden berücksichtigt. Die Zeitschrift ist offen für Beiträge von Autoren aller archäologischen oder verwandten Disziplinen. Den geographischen Rahmen bildet Europa, insbesondere Zentraleuropa mit den Nachbarländern des heutigen Österreichs.

While Social Network Analysis (SNA) has become an accepted research tool in historical studies in the last decades, actual theoretical foundations for the approach to depict and analyse past social realities in the form of nodes and ties have remained as many-voiced and sometimes under-determined as in other fields of network analysis. A theoretical framework from which historical network analysis may benefit is the systems theory established by the sociologist Niklas LUHMANN (1927–1998). In Luhmann´s theory, social systems are systems of communication; in modern society, Luhmann identified several differentiated communication systems such as politics, religion or economy. For the analysis of Byzantine society, we combine Luhmannʼs framework with the concepts of SNA: we understand ties between nodes as potential channels of communication which can pertain to any communication system. And while communications between individuals in a specific institutional framework such as state administration or the church may primarily pertain to one system, we have to account for “multiplex” ties of communication and an overlap of various communication systems on the same set of nodes (who, in Luhmannʼs theory, are not per se part of any of these social systems, which only consist of communications). This approach also enables us either to examine communication ties (their density, distribution patterns, etc.) of one system separately or to concentrate on the structural position of individuals within the general social framework. Thus, we demonstrate that Luhmann can provide a coherent and at the same time flexible framework for historical network analysis.

The financing of the conquest of Granada was possible thanks to the concession to the monarchy by the Papacy of economic resources perceived in the form of bull of indulgence of crusade and subsidy/tenth on ecclesiastical income (“décimas”), both in Castile and in the Crown of Aragon. In this sense, the accounting of the crusade and “décimas” between 1484 and 1492 allows analyzing some of the financing mechanisms of the war, but also other elements related to the role played by the war in the phenomena of economic integration. For example, the capital flows stimulated by the war in a space that transcended the borders between kingdoms, and the links established between increasingly wider areas based on the activity carried out by Genoese, Castilian and Aragonese agents, whose activities as lenders, intermediaries, suppliers or treasurers of the crusade and “décima”, laid the foundations of the increasingly closer links between credit and finance observed in the Hispanic and Euro-Mediterranean context.

Contents:

- Einige Grundlagen der (Historischen) Sozialen Netzwerkanalyse

- Vom historischen Dokument zum Netzwerk

- Das Individuum im Zentrum – Ego-Netzwerke in Byzanz

- Die Verflechtungen innerhalb einer Institution – Netzwerke der Interaktion in der Synode von Konstantinopel und ihre zeitliche Dynamik

- Die Ungleichverteilung von Netzwerkverbindungen – das Geflecht der spätbyzantinischen Aristokratie
-
Ein kurzer Ausblick: die Erfassung des Raumes – der geographische Aspekt von Netzwerken

- Zusammenfassung

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This visualization is based on memoirs written between 1908 and 1909 and covers the life of JBB between 1893 - 1909. The network is directed and fully zoomable when downloaded.

The memoirs are located in the City Archive of Sarajevo. I got the transcript from Diana Graham Cordileone, Ph.D.

Data and visualization: Kemal Abdić

Paper for the conference “Olkas. From Aegean to the Black Sea. Medieval Ports in the Maritime Routes of the East”, Thessalonike, December 2013 (cf. http://www.olkas.net/com/9_Conference) .

Published in: Medieval Ports in North Aegean and the Black Sea.
Links to the Maritime Routes of the East. International Symposium
Thessalonike, 4-6 December 2013. PROCEEDINGS. Edited by Flora Karagianni. Thessalonike 2013.

In 2012, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft granted funding to the major
collaborative research focus “Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages”
(SPP-1630) with the aim of interdisciplinary research on the phenomenon of the
“harbour”. One of these projects, “Ports and landing places at the Balkan coasts of
the Byzantine Empire (4th-12th century). Monuments and technology, economy and
communication”, focuses on the coastline from Dalmatia via the Aegean Sea to the
western Black Sea and the Danube delta. Based on an analysis of all available
sources and archaeological evidence, the aim is a complete survey of the coastal
towns, bays and estuaries documented in these regions for the period 300-1204 AD;
this should make possible differentiations with regard to the respective local significance
of harbours for regional communication as well as for long-distance trade.
The project will use the well-established methodological toolkit of the Tabula
Imperii Byzantini for the survey of the historical and monumental evidence in order to
augment the data basis of the already existing volumes of the TIB. At the same time,
we intend to combine this information with digital geo-data both from published material
(in print and online) as well as from own exploring voyages in the region; on
this basis, modern tools of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be used for
the analysis of maritime sites and transport systems. The aim of the present paper is
a demonstration of the explanatory value of instruments of GIS as well as of network
analysis on various levels for research on maritime sites, regions and networks with
three short case studies in order to illustrate the potential of our approach within
Byzantine maritime studies. These three case studies have been selected from regions
within the modern borders of Greece (respectively beyond for the last one),
which is the area of responsibility of the author of this paper in the above mentioned
project.