NETWORK PATTERNS: A CASE STUDY OF THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC SITES IN THE NORTHERN BLACK SEA REGION

The region near the Black Sea (northern part) was characterized by specific natural environment and therefore by diversity of primeval lifeways during the Upper Paleolithic period. Since the middle of the 20th century there have been two main concepts regarding economic and settlement specificity of this area. Some researchers admitted the existence of special economic “steppe region”, primeval inhabitants of which had similar subsistence systems and similar toolkit. Meanwhile, an alternative hypothesis about presence of separate locuses in this area is strongly supported in the light of recent research of the Upper Paleolithic group of sites near Kamennaya Balka (Leonova et al, 2006). Due to the fact that this issue has remained open to date, possible resolution would be found through the implementation of network analysis. Applying network analysis to the archaeological research would enable us to recover interconnections and to evaluate degree of such linkages. Usage of this analysis is productive in the research of settlement systems and geographical distribution of the Upper Paleolithic sites as well as modeling and testing them on the empirical material. Current research is dedicated to the simulation of two network patterns based on archaeological data from the Upper Paleolithic sites in the Northern Black Sea region. Each of them is characterized by degree of node (in this case, an archaeological site is considered as a node) and the connectivity index. The various simulations of edges configuration in both models provide clusters of nodes, which could be explained by not only topological characteristics, but also by particular subsistence features.
Author(s): Fedorchenko, Olena (Department of archaeology, National University of Kiyv)

Видео NETWORK PATTERNS: A CASE STUDY OF THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC SITES IN THE NORTHERN BLACK SEA REGION канала European Association of Archaeologists