More was different: Urban connectivity in Iron Age and Roman southern Spain

In 1972 Nobel-prize winner P.W. Anderson published an article in which he opposed reductionism in scientific practice. In this article entitled “more is different” Anderson argued that large and complex aggregates of elementary particles are not merely a sum of its properties but show entirely new properties at each level of complexity. In other and more familiar words: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The ‘Urban connectivity in Iron Age and Roman southern Spain’ project, directed by Prof. Simon Keay and Dr. Graeme Earl (University of Southampton), claims that “more” was also different in the past. It rises to the challenge of trying to understand exactly how different “more” actually was.

The project aims to explore the many ways in which settlements in the south of Spain between the early fifth century BC and the late fifth century AD related and how this is reflected in material remains. The explicit analysis of these relationships will allow for a better understanding of how Roman provincial landscapes were “created” and developed, and how urban identities were negotiated. For this purpose we developed a complex network analysis method that allows us to explore our large archaeological dataset and the idea of urban connectivity in the past on multiple scales.

This method is represented in the images you can see here. Sites and the archaeological data found on them can be represented as star-shaped networks (a). We can create such star-shapes for each of the 190 sites this project is concerned with (b). We assume that sites are related in some way if they have evidence of the same data types (c). The more data types sites share the stronger their relationship. If we do this for all sites we can create networks that contain all the information on urban connectivity collected for the project. An example of all the evidence dated to the Early Imperial period (late first century BC to early third century AD) is given here (d).

The analysis of such networks will allow us to examine particular interactions between specific sites, the changing research contexts of these sites and how they collectively created a constantly developing system of urban settlements in the area. By doing this we bridge the gap between the individual potshards, coins and bricks on the one hand and the related whole on the other. This approach led us to believe that “more” is in fact different, “more” has always been different, and “more” deserves our attention as archaeologists.

People

• Tom Brughmans
• Simon Keay
• Graeme Earl