Casting the Net Wider: Network Approaches to Artefact Variation in Post-Roman Europe
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Casting the Net Wider: Network Approaches to Artefact Variation in Post-Roman Europe Toby F. Martin 1 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper explores the stylistic variability of fifth- and sixth-century brooches in Europe using network visualisations, suggesting an alternative means of study, which for more than a century has been dominated by typology. It is suggested that network methods and related theories offer alternative conceptual models that encourage original ways of exploring material that has otherwise become canonical. Foremost is the proposal that objects of personal adornment like brooches were a means of competitive display through which individuals mediated social relationships within and beyond their immediate communities, and in so doing formed surprisingly far-flung networks. The potential sizes of these networks varied according to their location in Europe, with particularly large distances of up to 1000 km achieved in Scandinavia and continental Europe. In addition, an overall tendency toward the serial reproduction of particular forms in the mid-sixth century has broader consequences for how we understand the changing nature of social networks in post-Roman Europe. Keywords Archaeology . Networks . Early medieval Europe . Typology
Introduction Historically speaking, few classes of object can claim a higher level of influence over the archaeology of their periods than the elaborate bow brooches of the fifth to seventh centuries. Their distinctive regional styles and apparent transmissions around Europe have given rise to more than a century of debate concerning migration and ethnicity, exemplified by the now controversial but still casually used labels of ‘Frankish Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-01909441-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Toby F. Martin [email protected]
1
Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, Rewley House 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA, UK
Martin
brooches’, ‘Thuringian brooches’, ‘Slavic brooches’ and so on. The ubiquity of such ethnic terminology is surely related to the dominance of typology in the scholarship of these artefacts, thanks to its emphasis on grouping and delineation. Brooches have become exemplars of the typological method due to the geographical and chronological patterning that arises from their particularly complex stylistic variation. A mass of predominantly typological literature stretches back to the late nineteenth century, yet for some decades, there has been a palpable ambivalence toward the typological method due to an impasse in debates over the relative subjectivity of the method (e.g. Adams and Adams 1991) as well as scepticism toward the idea that typology will ever provide a definitive means of tracing ethnic identity (Hakenbeck 2007; Gauß 2009; Theune 2014), leading to polarised opinions that have made it harder to traverse the divide. Despite this apparent malaise, thanks to its practic
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