CHAPTER 7
Networks and Ethnogenesis
Anna C. F. Collar
Introduction
Using the methodological frame of the “network” to study the ancient world has become
increasingly popular over the last decade or so. The concept of the network offers us the
opportunity to approach antiquity from a different perspective: for example, we can see
social and technological change as a distributed process with multiple causes; we can
reconsider ancient physical topography as punctuated by places that have “network cen-
trality”; we can re-conceptualize the flows and migrations of groups of people; and we
can see the spread of ideas and innovation as products of social network connections,
rather than necessarily as inevitable “progress.” Network methods are rapidly becoming
essential tools for analyzing the transmission of such diverse entities as genes, technolo-
gies, diseases, and ideas in the modern world, and the same is true of antiquity. In this
volume dedicated to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean, it is also pertinent to con-
sider how a reflexive understanding of ethnic selfhood and ethnic group can be formed
and maintained by interactions across social networks.
In this chapter, we examine some of the central tenets and intellectual value of theoriz-
ing networks, and briefly explore how various network methodologies have been used to
study the ancient world, and the exciting new findings their use enables. We then look
at the concept of ethnogenesis and how it can be considered as a process that operates
through social networks. To situate the discussion within the ancient Mediterranean, we
look at three case studies: the coming into being of the Greeks in the Archaic period, the
re-creation of Jewish ethnic selfhood in the Imperial Roman period, and the debate about
Germanic ethnic identity in Late Antiquity. Each of these case studies has controversial
aspects, and each is explored in depth elsewhere in this volume. In this chapter, there-
fore, I consider the role that networks, both directly through social interconnections,
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, First Edition. Edited by Jeremy McInerney.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.