Dyads and Triads in Community Detection: a view from the Italian Bronze Age

As archaeological applications of social network analyses mature, new approaches may be incorporated into the network analysis ‘toolkit’ for archaeologists. One potential area for analysis that has long been important in social network studies but to date has been virtually ignored by archaeologists is the study of local structure, the relations of nodes and ties within networks, particularly dyads and triads. With relatively sparse datasets most archaeologists have focused on macrolevel studies of entire networks, or else the roles of particular nodes in networks. Microlevel studies offer insights into the structural properties of a network and may provide bases for comparisons of network characters that would not be apparent from density measures or other macrolevel measures of connectivity alone. This paper examines the triad census and the related concept of transitivity and applies these concepts to a particular case study: the networks of archaeological sites with ties based on the co-presence of artifact types in peninsular Italy at the end of the Bronze Age. I demonstrate that microlevel studies such as the ones considered here can reveal new information about the structure of archaeological networks.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC

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