Love thy (Middle Bronze Age) neighbor: A network model for central and northern Greece

AbstractA century of archaeology has identified hundreds of potential sites north of the Corinthian Isthmus on the Greek mainland and in the northeast Aegean contemporary with the Middle Helladic–Late Helladic I Period (MH–LH I, ca. 2100–1550 BC). This paper presents an exploratory nearest neighbor network model to examine connectivity in a scenario where maritime movement included widespread access to the sail (known from the wider Aegean). Analysis of clustering and centrality in the modeled network shows that nodes along the Euboean Gulf were the most important for overall connectivity, and that seemingly geographically isolated sites in the Sporades archipelago and Chalkidiki were crucial for integrating the northern Aegean with central Greece. The later Late Bronze Age palatial centers of Thebes, Orchomenos, and Dimini/Volos on the other hand do not score highly on any centrality measure in this scenario, suggesting that their inherent position on the modeled network did not greatly contribute to their eventual success. This observation is in line with recent scholarship, increasingly pointing to an important endogenous aspect to emerging complexity in central Greece.Keywords: Middle HelladicAegeanconnectivitycentralityemerging complexity AcknowledgementsThis paper owes its inspiration to the Connected Past, Heraklion 2022: Networks in the Archaeology of the Ancient Aegean conference co-organized by Carl Knappett and Stella Mandalaki together with an associated workshop on network analysis led by Tom Brughmans. Bartłomiej Lis, Alex Knodell, Laura Magno, and Michael Loy provided valuable advice on early drafts. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable critiques and suggestions.Disclosure statementThe author declares no conflict of interest.Additional informationFundingThis project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 847639 and from the Ministry of Education and Science. PASIFIC Fellowship Agreement No PAN.BFB.S.BDN.627.022.2021.