8 Meinert
perspectives.10 Although a proper network analysis is not yet provided in this
volume, a few remarks on the network approach in general are nonetheless
useful to frame the current research agenda. In its most basic definition a net-
work is nothing more than a collection of nodes and links with basic formal
properties. Only when further investigating what nodes and links actually
are—with regard to the centrality and function of nodes, and the directional-
ity and frequency of exchange between them—are new ideas about links and
dynamic relations between nodes allowed to emerge, rather than seeing nodes
simply as static entities.11
When trying to identify the primary points of importance in the given
geopolitical and intercultural network—the system linking the oasis towns
along the Central Asian Silk Road, as well as their further branches into the
Transhimalayan and Tibetan regions—there are locales, which carry added
significance for a variety of reasons. As is common to network theories, broadly
10 See e.g. the works by Monica L. Smith, who argues for the application of network
approaches on mapping premodern states: “Networks, Territories, and Cartography of
Ancient States,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95.4 (2005): 832–849;
and “Territories, Corridors, and Networks: A Biological Model for the Premodern State,”
Wiley Periodicals 12.4 (2007): 28–35. Moreover, network approaches have been discussed
in a number of fields in the humanities in recent years. A valuable contribution which
tackles the advantages of a network approach in archaeology, a view that is easily adapt-
able for the current research and inspired this present volume as well, is: Knappett, Carl,
ed., Network Analysis in Archaeology. New Approaches to Regional Interaction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013). An actual network analysis with regard to the Buddhist
network in Central Asia is envisioned for the long term research agenda.
11 See Knappett, Carl, “Introduction: Why Networks?” in Network Analysis in Archaeology.
New Approaches to Regional Interaction, ed. Carl Knappett (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013), 3–4. The author makes use of advances in physics and complexity science
and pays particular attention to the breakthrough paper on ‘small worlds’ by Duncan J.
Watts and Steven H. Strogatz (“Collective Dynamics of ‘Small-World’ Networks,” Nature
393 (1998): 440–442). Moreover, the idea of ‘centrality’ is further elaborated in Rivers, Ray,
Carl Knappett and Tim Evans, “What Makes a Site Important? Centrality, Gateways, and
Gravity,” in Network Analysis in Archaeology. New Approaches to Regional Interaction, ed.
Carl Knappett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 125–150.
The abovementioned network approach by Monica L. Smith employs a node-corridor
model based on observations in animal behaviour. In her article “Territories, Corridors,
and Networks,” 28, she argues that “ ‘territory’ does not consist of undifferentiated use of
landscape. Instead, the concept of territory can be parsed into a series of resource-rich
nodes linked by corridors of access, surrounded by unutilized regions and boundaries
marked at points of competition.”