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.

‘Loy has done admirable and dogged work in aggregating an immense amount of legacy data into new forms that can reinvigorate old debates and introduce new questions about the development of communities and economies in the Archaic Aegean.’

Megan Daniels Source: Bryn Mawr Classical Review

‘Michael Loy’s monograph is an innovative and intriguing contribution to the growing body of work using computational methods in archaeology. It takes advantage of the vast - and often unwieldy - datasets produced by more than a century of excavations in Greece … the book has the considerable merit of pointing the way towards new ways of working with old data, and there is no denying that this is a serious and thought-provoking attempt to rethink how we study connectivity in early Greece, as well as opening up the debate on how to work with Big Data in our subject. It asks questions worth grappling with - and reminds us that the big datasets sitting in archaeological archives are not just the residue of past projects, but potential sources for reimagining the field.’

Mirko Canevaro Source: Journal of Greek Archaeology