Studying Socio-Economic Behaviour in Ptolemaic Egypt with Social Network Analysis is the topic to be addressed by Dr. Lena Tambs (University of Cologne) at the Egyptology Study Group (ESG) at the University of Helsinki.
Studying Socio-Economic Behaviour in Ptolemaic Egypt with Social
Network Analysis, abstract
Social Network Analysis (SNA) is still far from mainstream in historical
fields, but its potential for studying the past is being increasingly
acknowledged. A topic that is rarely accessible to the ancient historian, is the
behavior of individuals and groups. How did past people behave and what drove them
to act in such manners?
Dr. Lena Tambs will share with us the methodological approach and selected
networks she studied in her recent Ph.D. She extracted prosopographical,
attribute and relational data from Greek and Demotic documents associated
with 21 ancient archives from Pathyris (Gebelein) in Upper Egypt, and
analyzed the retrieved data as social network models. Utilizing conceptual
and digital tools offered by the network analytical software Gephi, she
thereby demonstrated that aspects of SNA can be fruitfully applied to
explore socio-economic behavioral patterns in this small-scale community.
Soon, she will join the Helsinki Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near
Eastern
Empires (ANEE) to study a much larger dataset – the so-called Archive of
Zenon – from a distinct network perspective. Thus, she will end her lecture
with a brief introduction to the project she is about to initiate at the
University
of Helsinki.
Registration
Participation is free-of-charge but requires registration to receive
the zoom information here.
Registration is also open for the upcoming lectures in the series (separate
registration for each lecture):
13.04.2021, at 18.15–19.45: Irmgard Hein (University of Vienna),
The Eastern Nile Delta, and the Beginning of the Late Bronze Age.
11.05.2021, at 18.15–19.45: Inmaculada Vivas Sainz (University ofMadrid),
Art on the move? Mobility of artists and diffusion of styles and iconography
in 18th Dynasty Egypt.
08.06.2021, at 18.15–19.45: Françoise Labrique (University of Cologne /
Université libre de Bruxelles), Bes in Bahariya.
For registration details and further information please check out the
ANEE NEWS.