A Bridge too Far - Historical, Archaeological and Criminal Network Research (edited collection)

Over the last decades, archaeologists and ancient historians have slowly come to realise the potential network science — and especially Social Network Analysis (SNA) — holds for studying past phenomena and better understanding the complex systems and relationships they were (and are) entangled in. Similarly, network analytical theories and methods have been successfully applied to explore art-related crimes and illicit trafficking of antiquities.

Because archaeologists, historians and cultural heritage researchers tend to work with different source material, network data and research questions, their subfields have developed in different directions. Still, researchers who seek to learn more about the past (and present) through the application of network scientific tools also share a lot of common ground.

To encourage continued and increased dialogue and collaboration between the named communities, we aim to help raise awareness of fruitful (combinations of) tools and methodologies for studying relational phenomena. We started the initiative by organising a session at the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conference held in Amsterdam (CAA2023). With this special collection, we seek to continue the discussion.