104 Anna C. F. Collar
Ethnogenesis and the Creation of Ethnic
Identity in Antiquity
Having seen how a variety of methodologies are being used to explore different aspects
of the ancient world, we shall now examine how networks might influence the cre-
ation of ethnic identity. A key question here is “how does individual behavior aggre-
gate to collective behavior?” (Watts 2003: 24). The change in perspective afforded by
conceptualizing societies as networks is the emphasis placed on thedynamicsof interac-
tion in influencing the transfer, adoption, and failure of ideas, information, and material
things. These connections can also result in the creation (and dissolution) of a notion of
group ethnicity.
“At its most basic level, an ethnic group is a named human population that shares a
sense of solidarity. Ethnicity is a presumed identity, and unlike kinship, it is not based on
blood ties or concrete social interaction. A number of features commonly mark ethnic
groups: a proper name, a mythic common ancestry (including an origin story), shared
memory of a past both mythical and historical, a link to a homeland, and common cul-
tural elements, such as language, religion, and kinship systems” (Smoak 2006: 5). In
the Oxford English Dictionary,ethnogenesis—from the Greekethnos, “a company, body
of men,” “a race or tribe,” “a nation or people,” andgenesis, “an origin, source,” “a
birth, race, descent”— is described as follows: “the formation or emergence of an ethnic
group within a larger community.” This can be a highly contingent process, one enacted
through both self-definition and collective attribution (Nagel 1996: 21), and initiated
by external factors—such as social, political, or economic change.
Ethnicity is a socially constructed and subjective aspect of identity, which can be recon-
structed, adopted, and redefined by different people in different environments. Without
textual help, and even with, it can be extremely hard to distinguish ethnic groups in
antiquity, and much controversy has surrounded the equation of ethnicities with artifacts.
Whichever way it is conceptualized and formed, and however we choose to find it in the
archaeological record, ethnicity essentially entails identification (whether self-defined or
attributed) as a member of agroup. Although such a group can be widely dispersed, there
remains fundamental common ground that connects those members.
Any group that self-identifies as such can be seen as aclusterin network terms—made
up of strong-tie connections. Granovetter suggests that the strength of a tie is marked by
“a combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual con-
fiding), and reciprocal services” between two nodes (Granovetter 1973: 1361). Although
strong ties usually form what is known in sociology as a “closed triad”—the structural
situation describing three individuals who are all likely to know each other—they can
also possess other markers of strength, such as frequency or length of contact (Shi et al.
2006: 1).
Strong ties form close-knit communities, and occur more frequently than long-distance
links. Long-distance links transgress local cluster boundaries, forming shortcuts to other
clusters: the “small world” is a global network phenomenon that arises from local
network interactions. Although weak ties are useful for “simple” diffusion that does not
require frequent contact or trust, these links do not exert great influence on people