Networking seems like a modern phenomenon, but it is as old as the road to Rome, or rather:as the sailing route to the Caribbean. Archaeologist Angus Mol analyzes social networks in the pre-colonial Caribbean in his dissertation.
Before Mol started his research, a network science approach was not yet used in archaeology. Mol's job to change that. "The problem is," he says, "that other fields of research can study existing social structures, while as an archaeologist you have to work mainly with material remains, such as excavated ornaments or utensils. Between finding some jars and a theory about the social relationships between the users of those jars at the time, there is a big gap.” In his dissertation, Mol tries to bridge the gap between those two worlds.
Shell faces
For example, he looked at the iconographic styles of various art objects. Mol analyzed countless guaízas:small faces made from a shell that served as ornaments or gifts. He found that all objects were of the same type, yet all different. Mol:“After I ran a network analysis on it, you suddenly saw overarching patterns. It turned out that the closer the shell faces were found to each other, the less similarities they showed to each other. That fits nicely into the gift theory. After all, you want to give a unique gift, so you have to make sure that your gift is different from all the others.”
Caribbean society turned out to be much more diverse than previously thought. While most people think of the Caribbean as palm-fringed islands with tropical beaches, in reality it is a much more ecologically diverse area. The Amerindian population was therefore almost forced to make contact with other islands and their inhabitants. 'As a result, despite a great diversity of languages and cultures, there was always a lot of mutual contact, and therefore social and cultural exchange,' explains Mol. “That is different from our multicultural society, which critics say has failed because the different groups have lived at different times.”
Columbus
The explorer Christopher Columbus also makes grateful use of these social networks. After his arrival in the Bahamas, he immediately hired some local men as guides. He used their knowledge of the region; who lives where, who is friendly, who is hostile? Mol:'Without that local network knowledge about the archipelago, the voyage of discovery would probably have been completely different. Moreover, the close contact with the indigenous population has resulted in a great deal of cross-pollination. We owe this to our hammock and the barbecue, among other things. Not to mention the influence on the current geopolitical and cultural relations in the world.'