Marxism in archaeology: Real or spurious?

Spriggs, Matthew, ed. Marxist Perspectives in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. viii + 158 pp. including photographs, individual bibliographies, index. $39.50 cloth.

Miller, Daniel, and Christopher Tilley, eds. Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. viii + 157 pp. including photographs, individual bibiographies, index. $39.50 cloth.     

Production and reproduction: A reprise

Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory. New York: Academic Press. 1978, 1979, 1980. Vol. I: xv+426 pp., $24.50; Vol. II, xii + 340 pp., $28.50; Vol. III, xii + 448 pp., $39.50.     

Networks and Neolithisation: sourcing obsidian from Körtik Tepe (SE Anatolia)

This paper details the use of obsidian sourcing to reconstruct networks of interaction (or ‘communities of practice’) amongst populations of south-eastern Anatolia and the Near East in the context of ‘Neolithisation’ during the late 11th–early 10th millennia BC. EDXRF was used to elementally characterise 120 artefacts of Epi-Palaeolithic – Pre-Pottery Neolithic A date from Körtik Tepe in south-eastern Anatolia. Four eastern Anatolian sources are represented, mainly Bingöl A/B and Nemrut Da?, plus the first evidence for the use of Mu? obsidian. When the source data is integrated with the artefacts' techno-typological attributes it is possible to locate the assemblage within an Upper Tigris tradition (with some interesting local differences), which stands in stark contrast to contemporary practices in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant. These local and regional distinctions support recent views of the Neolithic being much more heterogeneous, with a ‘mosaic’ of community-specific/local traditions of subsistence practices, raw material choices and lithic technologies during the Younger Dryas–Early Holocene.     

Micro‐Level Interpretation of Exponential Random Graph Models with Application to Estuary Networks

The exponential random graph model (ERGM) is an increasingly popular method for the statistical analysis of networks that can be used to flexibly analyze the processes by which policy actors organize into a network. Often times, interpretation of ERGM results is conducted at the network level, such that effects are related to overall frequencies of network structures (e.g., the number of closed triangles in a network). This limits the utility of the ERGM because there is often interest, particularly in political and policy sciences, in network dynamics at the actor or relationship levels. Micro‐level interpretation of the ERGM has been employed in varied applications in sociology and statistics. We present a comprehensive framework for interpretation of the ERGM at all levels of analysis, which casts network formation as block‐wise updating of a network. These blocks can represent, for example, each potential link, each dyad, the out‐ or in‐going ties of each actor, or the entire network. We contrast this interpretive framework with the stochastic actor‐based model (SABM) of network dynamics. We present the theoretical differences between the ERGM and the SABM and introduce an approach to comparing the models when theory is not sufficiently strong to make the selection a priori. The alternative models we discuss and the interpretation methods we propose are illustrated on previously published data on estuary policy and governance networks.