Abstract: A quantitative method for identifying meaningful groups of people in administrative cuneiform archives

By Émilie Pagé-Perron, University of Toronto

American Oriental Society Meeting 2017
Saturday March 18th afternoon - ANE IV, Bunker Hill Room
Omni Hotel, California Plaza, 251 South Olive Street, Los Angeles

Exploring cuneiform corpora in order to answer social, political and economic questions often at least partly rely on prosopographical research. This is usually undertaken using traditional text analysis methods employing, inter alia, typologies for classification, although a growing number of scholars utilize social network analysis to this end. This still marginal approach in the field is rather successful (see for instance the work of C. Waerzeggers, S. Brumfield and A. Anderson) but it is unclear which method is best suited for this investigative task and to what degree both methods are complementary. How valid are these new methods? Can we really translate quantitative results into qualitative assessment of relationships?

In this paper, I will be investigating administrative cuneiform texts provenienced in Adab that span from the Early Dynastic to the late Sargonic period and will compare classical methods for the identification of archives and sub-groupings with a social network analysis investigative process. In order to do this, I will process the relationship between people using network analysis algorithms (such as components, blocks and their brokers, K-plexes, K-cores and factions algorithms). The groups identified will then be compared with the actual archives, political and social groups, work units, and family ties that have already been identified in secondary literature treating this body of texts.

By carefully contrasting results of classical and digital methods of inquiry applied to identifying ancient groups of individuals in administrative texts, this paper will demonstrate how these methods compare to each other and how complementary they can be.