How can we determine how societies were connected in the past? This question has been at the forefront of many archaeological studies and debates for as long as the field has existed. We can draw boundaries around architecture to determine communities, suggesting that those within interacted more strongly with each other than with those without, or we could look to the spread of material culture (say, a specific type of lithic artifact) and suggest that those who adopted it were linked. Do these two approaches, though, mean the same thing? Can we determine social networks of the past from limited material culture?
Archaeologists can determine how people were connected in the past, and we can do so even with the limited material record we can access, though it requires innovative approaches to address these questions. Matthew A. Peeples's new book, Connected Communities: Networks, Identity, and Social Change in the Ancient Cibola World, applies such innovation, combining approaches from relational sociology and social network analysis to a large set of data to examine connectedness and social change in the US Southwest. Throughout the book he takes the reader through the process of understanding the complex intersection of similarities and differences of material culture (categories) and networks of interaction in the northern New Mexico/Arizona world of the Cibola. He terms this combination of categories and networks “catnets.” Focusing his lens on the period of dramatic social change between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, Peeples examines the development and evolution of social movements during this transitional time. While this book is about social networks in the American Southwest, its appeal is broad. Below I outline a few reasons that specific populations of archaeologists would be interested in this book.
Peeples's contributions to understanding the connectivity of the greater Southwest cannot be overstated, and the sheer quantity of data he compiles (and has curated for open access on The Digital Archaeological Record [tDAR]; see his digital appendix) is to be applauded. Further, his work brings together several threads from various studies in the greater Southwest that are instrumental for understanding connectivity and migration. Finally, he demonstrates how to use material evidence, including a vast array of ceramic data, to understand social processes in the past. His work is the culmination of several decades of Southwestern scholarship and is likely to become a foundational study in the region.
If you have been attempting to understand coordination among dispersed populations, Peeples demonstrates how to understand this via a networked approach and how this can lead to changes in social makeup. His interpretations, as well as methods, are generalizable beyond the Cibola world and would bring utility to understanding similar social processes elsewhere. He also shows how to determine social boundaries without relying on fraught concepts of ethnicity.
Network approaches are highly formalized and can be intimidating, especially for practitioners who are just starting out. However, Peeples's book moves beyond mere graph theoretical approaches to show the reader why these approaches are useful. He breaks down the steps to help the reader focus on what matters. In this way, his book is not just for the math-inclined but also for the math-averse, in that those without formal training can still follow Peeples's train of thought and understand the outcomes even if the methods are skipped over (though I encourage a read through of those).
For those applying network analysis to archaeological data, this book provides the pièce de résistance of network approaches: a massive dataset that provides the ability to examine the connectedness among people in the past through the mathematical approaches this method offers. Peeples's interpretations of the network data bespeak a nuanced understanding of the methods and the material culture. His write-up of the results and interpretation will be useful for new network practitioners for decades to come.
Beyond these reasons, it is worth noting that Peeples's writing style draws the reader in. While computational network analysis can be a dry topic, Peeples describes his work with flair and in an easy-to-read manner. This is no dry text: passages are in turn charming, methodical, and witty, and the models are presented in a fresh and clear manner. This book is quite honestly a pleasure to read, and it is refreshing to find such a technical topic described in such a manner. As network approaches advance, this book will become dog-eared by students and professors alike. In Peeples's writing, readers come for the models and stay for the prose.
