Table Of ContentModeling the Past
Modeling the Past
Archaeology, History,
and Dynamic Networks
I
John Terrell, Mark Golitko,
Helen Dawson, and Marc Kissel
berghahn
N E W Y O R K (cid:129) O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2023 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2023 John Terrell, Mark Golitko, Helen Dawson, and Marc Kissel
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
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storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number:
2023004645
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-80073-869-0 hardback
ISBN 978-1-80073-870-6 ebook
https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800738690
I agree that the view of Nature which I have maintained in these lectures
is not a simple one. Nature appears as a complex system whose factors are
dimly discerned by us. But, as I ask you, Is not this the very truth? Should
we not distrust the jaunty assurance with which every age prides itself that
it at last has hit upon the ultimate concepts in which all that happens can
be formulated? The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of
complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are
simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the
life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.
—Alfred North Whitehead,
The Concept of Nature, Trinity College (November 1919)
Unlike the scientifi c hypothesis, a model is not verifi able directly by
experiment. For all models are both true and false. Almost any plausible
proposed relation among aspects of nature is likely to be true in the sense
that it occurs (although rarely and slightly). Yet all models leave out a lot
and are in that sense false, incomplete, inadequate. The validation of a
model is not that it is “true” but that it generates good testable hypotheses
relevant to important problems.
—Richard Levins,
“The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology” (1966)
Contents
I
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. History Matters 1
1. Dynamic Relational Analysis 10
2. Start with a Question 33
3. Theories of History 59
4. Modeling Theories 83
5. Developing Hypotheses 109
6. Gathering Information 129
7. Analyzing Data 148
Conclusion. So What? 178
Glossary 195
References 199
Index 225
Illustrations
I
Figures
1.1. An elementary social network. 16
1.2. Relational contingencies in the category “network models.” 29
1.3. Mississippi Valley watershed. 31
2.1. Islands in the southwest Pacifi c. 41
2.2. Network model of social connections in the New Guinea
region given a maximal distance of 220 km. 46
2.3. Network model of social connections in the New Guinea
region given a maximal distance of 360 km. 47
2.4. Obsidian at sites in the New Guinea region dating before
3,500 years ago. 52
2.5. Obsidian at sites in the New Guinea region dating between
3,500–2,000 years ago. 53
3.1. Facts matter, but what is a fact? 61
3.2. Theories are assumptions about why things are the way
they are (or appear to be). 63
3.3. Theories of history diff er in how far we are responsible for
what happened. 65
3.4. What would a Bronze Age world system look like? 75
3.5. Matrix of contacts between regions in the Mediterranean
around 1500–1200 BC. 77
3.6. A Mediterranean Bronze Age “small world” network. 78
3.7. Two models of history. 79
Illustrations • ix
4.1. The word “model” can have diff erent meanings. 86
4.2. Biblical and modern accounts of human origins. 90
4.3. Darwin’s model of what he called “the great Tree of Life.” 91
4.4. Graphic of the Iroquois type of kinship terminology
system. 92
4.5. The trellis model of recent human evolution. 96
4.6. Two models of why people in the Pacifi c are diverse. 99
4.7. Map of the Pacifi c showing places included in the study. 100
4.8. Network mapping of the localities included in the
genome scan. 102
4.9. Nearest-neighbor structuring of interaction among the
localities represented. 103
4.10. Network mapping of only the Pacifi c Island populations
in the genome scan. 104
4.11. The contingencies of the three models discussed. 106
4.12. A simple template for comparing two or more
contingency models. 108
5.1. Using Bayes’ Theorem and the probability that someone
sixty years of age or older in Wisconsin died. 114
5.2. Bayes’ Theorem modeled as a 2×2 contingency table. 116
5.3. Recording how much confi dence you have in a contin-
gency in the past. 120
5.4. A subjective baseline analysis using Bayes’ Theorem. 121
5.5. A three-dimensional ternary graph. 125
6.1. Categorical thinking, relational thinking, and model
building compared. 131
6.2. “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” 133
6.3. Dates of the earliest Neolithic sites in the Mediterranean. 138
7.1. A ceramic typology. 153
7.2. Age of Miss America and murders by steam, vapors, and
hot objects. 156
x • Illustrations
7.3. Settlements in Mesoamerica dated to between
~900–600 BC. 160
7.4. Two ways of explaining language diversity in New Guinea. 163
7.5. Apportionment of variation. 166
7.6. A selection of New Guinean bone daggers. 167
7.7. A social network model of 1,720 communities. 170
7.8. Results of Partial Mantel tests. 173
7.9. A mapping of some of the possible contingencies. 175
8.1. Why history matters. 181
8.2. How experience and facts matter. 192
Tables
0.1. Categorical vs. Relational Thinking. 7
3.1. Structural Theories of History. 66
3.2. Functional Theories of History. 68
3.3. Ecological Theories of History. 69
3.4. Participant Theories of History. 70
3.5. Control Theories of History. 72
