SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS CENTRALITY INDEXES AND CENTRAL PLACES: A CASE STUDY FROM EARLY IRON AGE CENTRAL ITALY

This paper presents the results of a project exploring the potential of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in the study of Complex Polities, by applying SNA Centrality indexes to the river and road Networks of Early Rome and the surrounding region.  The work conducted at NIAS (Netherlands) with the assistance of Wooter deNoy demonstrated that SNA centrality indexes can successfully predict the emergence of central places.  However, while this case study from early Iron Age central Italy demonstrated the potential of SNA, it also highlighted some of the theoretical and methodological issues associated with this approach.