HISTORY AND NETWORKS: New study in Science by Maximilian Schich et al. analyses and visualises the mobility of artists (mostly in Western Europe) over two millennia with the help of tools of network analysis Abstract: The emergent processes driving cultural history are a product of complex interactions among large numbers of individuals, determined by difficult-to-quantify historical conditions. To characterize these processes, we have reconstructed aggregate intellectual mobility over two millennia through the birth and death locations of more than 150,000 notable individuals. The tools of network and complexity theory were then used to identify characteristic statistical patterns and determine the cultural and historical relevance of deviations. The resulting network of locations provides a macroscopic perspective of cultural history, which helps us to retrace cultural narratives of Europe and North America using large-scale visualization and quantitative dynamical tools and to derive historical trends of cultural centers beyond the scope of specific events or narrow time intervals. You can find the full paper here: sciencemag.org/content/345/6196/558.full In 2011, Maximilian Schich had participated with our colleagues Mihailo Popovic and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller in a session on historical and archaeological network analysis in Beijing (https://archaeologicalnetworks.wordpress/2011/04/25/caa2011-networks-session-summary-and-discussion/). On ongoing research using network analysis and visualisation in Byzantine Studies at our Abteilung für Byzanzforschung/Division of Byzantine Research, look here and also the two images added to the one from the study of Schich et al.: oeaw.academia.edu/TopographiesofEntanglements
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 18:26:28 +0000