8 - Uniting Theory and Method for Archaeological Network Research

Summary

In this chapter we take a step back from our in-depth methodological overview to describe what we see as some of the possible future trajectories of productive and critical network research in archaeology. Networks are already beginning to help us address a broad range of archaeological questions, as we have seen in this book (see discussion in Chapter 2), and networks are certainly useful tools and analytical constructs for many common archaeological tasks. We see the increased importance of network methods in archaeology as a trend that is likely to continue. From this vantage point, we ask: What are the profitable next steps that might push network thinking and archaeological network research to the next level? How can network methods and theories help us toward new answers for old archaeological questions or even toward questions we have not yet considered? Can archaeologists contribute to the world of network science beyond archaeology? We believe that network science has transformative potential for archaeological research and that archaeologists can be important players in network science in general, if and only if explicitly formulated relational theories drive network research in the field going forward.