NeoNetS. A Social Network Approach to Understanding the Evolutionary Dynamics of Neolithic Societies (C. 7600-4000 cal. BP)

The NeoNetS Project proposes an approach based on Adaptive Complex Systems to assess whether the Recent Prehistory can be understood as a succession of adaptive cycles. If so, the aim is to address the following questions.

• How can we characterize them?

• How many can be differentiated

• What was its evolutionary dynamics (it fits the proposals that have been made from the Theory of Resilience: Growth, Conservation, Liberation/Dissolution, Renovation/Reorganization).

• What were the engines of this change. We are interested in evaluating the role of demography, climate, fundamental economic transformations and the Diffusion of information at the population scale in these cycles.

• And lastly, the relationship between these aspects, or some of them, with the complexity measured as concentration of wealth, power or social relations. Hence the importance of using an approach based on the Analysis of Complex Social Networks and, in particular, the identification of Power Law-type distributions, or power law, or also the San Mateo Principle.

To approach these problems we need a long-term approach. In our case about 3500 years of history. And with a geographical scale wide enough to assess these aspects: The East of the Iberian Peninsula, between the Ebro and Almería.