This book closes by returning to the problem of the polis, and to considering the extent to which a fresh approach can contribute new thoughts to an old debate. In considering what exactly an ancient city was, its activities are emphasised: the fact that a city formed political and economic connection with its neighbours helped to define it. The potentials and pitfalls of modelling for historical enquiry are considered, and the case is made for a more data-driven and ‘scientific’ classical archaeology of the next generation.

This chapter begins by considering the pattern of archaeology in Greece form the past 100 years that has generated huge datasets – and that these datasets have been largely under deployed in making historical conclusions about Greece of the seventh and sixth centuries BC. After reviewing the history of scholarship on ‘Archaic Greece’ (and the relative quietness of scholarship on this topic in the most recent decades) this chapter considers ways in which the huge amount of data from Archaic Greece could be organised and analysed. Various methods from the Digital Humanities are considered, with discussion focusing also on data cleaning and organisation, before proposing that network analysis will be a useful framework for this study in making clear the ways in which the first communities of Archaic Greece formed economic and political alliances – and rivalries – with one another.