"A network of mutualities of being": socio-material archaeological networks and biological ties at Çatalhöyük

Abstract

Recent advances in archaeogenomics have granted access to previously unavailable biological information with the potential to further our understanding of past social dynamics at a range of scales. However, to properly integrate these data within archaeological narratives, new methodological and theoretical tools are required. Effort must be put into finding new methods for weaving together different datasets where material culture and archaeogenomic data are both constitutive elements. This is true on a small scale, when we study relationships at the individual level, and at a larger scale when we deal with social and population dynamics. Specifically, in the study of kinship systems it is essential to contextualize and make sense of biological relatedness through social relations, which, in archaeology, is achieved by using material culture as a proxy. In this paper we propose a Network Science framework to integrate archaeogenomic data and material culture at an intrasite scale to study biological relatedness and social organization at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. Methodologically, we propose the use of network variance to investigate the concentration of biological relatedness and material culture within networks of houses. This approach allowed us to observe how material culture similarity between buildings gives valuable information on potential biological relationships between individuals and how biogenetic ties concentrate at specific localities on site.