Inferring the intensity of Social Network from radiocarbon dated Bronze Age archaeological contexts

<p>This paper presents the design of a Social Network Model used to explore a regional scale network of interaction in LBA-Early Iron Ages. We intend to investigate how raw material and technological information flows may have influenced economical exchange and social interaction through time.</p> <p>To define these networks of interaction we use a dataset composed of more than 1500 georeferenced and radiocarbon dated archaeological contexts of a period between the Early Bronze Age and the first Iron Age (1800-750BC) from an area including the North-East of Iberian Peninsula, Southern France, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Southern Germany. Two different networks can be built from this data: one relating each site with each nearest neighbor in space and time, and another built on the bases of similarity distance (material culture).</p> <p>Our aim is to analyze the dynamical nature of those networks and explore two alternative hypotheses: demic processes and cultural transmission mechanisms to understand the birth-growth-death of dynamic links between the nodes of the network in a one millennium trajectory.