Klazomenai, in the North Ionian region of the eastern Aegean, is an important site with a long occupation history that began in the 5th millennium BCE. Recent excavations have revealed diverse data from the domestic and the funerary spheres dating to the Early Iron Age. Large dwellings located on the southern outskirts of the prehistoric mound at Liman Tepe suggest continuous occupations during the transition from the end of the Late Bronze Age and throughout the Early Iron Age. Nineteen pottery samples were selected covering a chronological sequence from the late 12th through the late 6th century BCE for NAA. The results show Klazomenai’s involvement in pottery production during the 10th through the 6th centuries BCE and prove the site’s participation in long-distance maritime trade networks in the (northern) Aegean basin during the early first millennium BCE.

This paper examines a Greek Middle Geometric II pottery assemblage recovered during the Tunisian-Spanish excavations in the ancient city of Utica, Tunisia. The ceramics come from the deposit that sealed Well 200017, which further contained animal bones representing the remains of a ritual collective banquet. The ceramics are mainly of Phoenician, Libyan and Sardinian as well as Greek, Italic and Iberian origin. Most of the sherds come from bowls for consumption of food and drinks; there are also a few vessels for serving food and amphoras, while cooking vessels are very scarce. Based on our radiocarbon evidence, the context dates between 965–903 cal BCE, with a lower interval at 832 cal BCE. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) was carried out on forty-five samples mainly of Geometric pottery in two campaigns. This paper presents the NAA results of the pottery from Utica’s well that were sampled during the first campaign in 2015.

This paper examines the Protogeometric neck-handled type I transport amphoras at the sites of Elateia and Kynos in Locris, central Greece. Our NAA showed that these vases were imported to Locris most probably from the northern Aegean together with containers of other types such as belly-handled amphoras, which were all previously thought to have been local. The analytical evidence allows a new understanding of economic relations in the Aegean, especially between its northern and central parts. Finally, the PTAs from these sites represent evidence for their variable use in settlement and mortuary contexts such as those of the port site of Kynos and the cemetery of Elateia, where they were deposited as domestic refuse and burial gifts respectively.

The pattern of pottery consumption at the site of Koprivlen in south-eastern Bulgaria radically changed in the Early Iron Age after the appropriation and mass consumption of a ceramic ware of particular technology and of northern Aegean Geometric style. This ware, which was common in three micro-regions, around the Thermaic and Strymonic gulfs and also in the Nevrokop basin, and which probably originated in coastal Macedonia, was surprisingly more common in the remote inland site of Koprivlen than at any other site. This chapter explores issues of technology transfer and consumption of this conspicuous pottery, which is the most noticeable common cultural feature in the material culture of central, eastern and Pirin Macedonia during the Early Iron Age. Contextual analysis of this pottery demonstrates both copying and demic diffusion in its technology transfer and spatial differentiation in its consumption pattern.

Examination of pottery production has always been of major importance for the understanding of colonial enterprise in the western Mediterranean during the Middle Geometric II period. Neutron Activation Analysis carried out on ceramics dating from this period to the Early Archaic period and exchanged between Pithekoussai, Kyme and the necropolises of the Valle del Sarno now elucidates the origin of some of the earliest Greek pottery used in the Phlegraean area. Analytical studies further demonstrate the complexity of Pithekoussan-Kymean pottery production and the modes of its consumption and diffusion in Campania and beyond. It was possible to ascertain the dominance of local over imported ceramic wares, and the high degree of specialisation achieved by the Phlegraean workshops from a very early phase. This allows us to clarify the dynamics of the contacts between the motherland and the colonial cities, and therefore between the colonies and the Indigenous and Etruscan hinterland.

When many people (network researchers included) think about networks, the first thing that pops into their head is the classic network node-link diagram. In its simplest form a network graph is just a collection of points on a page representing entities of some sort with lines drawn to indicate the connections among those entities. Network visuals can be small and include only a few actors and relations where structural patterns and positions can be clearly observed. They can also be dizzyingly complex bundles of thousands, tens of thousands, or more entities and connections where general textures of relations and topological features might be visible but the positions of most nodes and edges are obscured by complexity. In either case, such visuals can paint a fascinating picture of a dataset and help a researcher recognize, interpret, and explain patterns in all manner of relational data that would otherwise be difficult to identify or communicate even with the myriad of network metrics available.

How dense is the network? What are the most centrally positioned nodes in the network? How long on average is a path through the network? Are there any cliques or communities in the network and which nodes are included? How does my network compare to other similarly defined networks in terms of local or global properties? These are the kinds of questions exploratory network methods can be used to answer.

In Chapter 1, we defined a network representation as a formal abstraction created for the purposes of visualization or analysis. Such network representations are created using network data. In this chapter, we define network data, its diverse types and data formats, and we give a wide range of examples of how it can be used to represent abstractions of archaeological data and relational theories. We conclude this chapter with best practice guidelines for how to go about collecting, documenting, storing, and sharing your network data.

In this chapter we take a step back from our in-depth methodological overview to describe what we see as some of the possible future trajectories of productive and critical network research in archaeology. Networks are already beginning to help us address a broad range of archaeological questions, as we have seen in this book (see discussion in Chapter 2), and networks are certainly useful tools and analytical constructs for many common archaeological tasks. We see the increased importance of network methods in archaeology as a trend that is likely to continue. From this vantage point, we ask: What are the profitable next steps that might push network thinking and archaeological network research to the next level? How can network methods and theories help us toward new answers for old archaeological questions or even toward questions we have not yet considered? Can archaeologists contribute to the world of network science beyond archaeology? We believe that network science has transformative potential for archaeological research and that archaeologists can be important players in network science in general, if and only if explicitly formulated relational theories drive network research in the field going forward.

Are my data good enough to create an archaeological network? What if I am missing some sites or contexts, or I have poor or variable quality information for some observations? Can I still apply network methods and models with incomplete and/or imperfect data, or should I not even attempt to use network methods? At this point, some of you may be asking yourselves questions along these lines. It is good to carefully consider potential data issues when conducting any archaeological analysis, but there are also some specific concerns revolving around sampling and data quality that deserve special attention when dealing with network data. In this chapter, we outline some of the most common issues you will encounter and further offer a generalized approach to identifying and assessing the potential impacts of sources of variation and uncertainty in network data through simulation and resampling.