2016/12/23 by Luce Prignano, Prignano, Luce, Ignacio Morer +5
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History #Ancient Near East History #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1612.09321
openalex publication_date 2016/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Ancient regional routes were vital for interactions between settlements and\ndeeply influenced the development of past societies and their\n"complexification". At the same time, since any transportation infrastructure\nneeds some level of inter-settlement cooperation to be established, they can\nalso be regarded as an epiphenomenon of social interactions at the regional\nscale. Here, we propose to analyze ancient pathway networks to understand the\norganization of cities and villages located in a certain territory, attempting\nto clarify whether such organization existed and if so, how it functioned. To\naddress such a question, we chose a quantitative approach. Adopting network\nscience as a general framework, by means of formal models, we try to identify\nhow the collective effort that produced the terrestrial infrastructure was\ndirected and organized. We selected a paradigmatic case study: Iron Age\nsouthern Etruria, a very well-studied context, with detailed archaeological\ninformation about settlement patterns and an established tradition of studies\non terrestrial transportation routes, perfectly suitable for testing new\ntechniques. The results of the modelling suggest that a balanced coordinated\ndecision-making process was shaping the route network in Etruria, a scenario\nwhich correlates well with the picture elaborated by different scholars using a\nmore traditional technique.\n