Cole M. Smith (University of Arizona)
The primary goal of this project is to show the complexity of the trade of Attic and other Greek pottery and the role of traders in relation to workshops through social network analysis (SNA). This is conducted through the encoding trademark and other branding data known for Greek pottery and analyzing it through the program NodeXL. The current focus revolves around the trademark data catalogued and organized into a typology by Alan W Johnston in his Trademarks on Greek Vases (1979) and Trademarks on Greek Vases; Addendum (2006). The extraction of entry components from these volumes including attribution, findspot, trademark type, and other pottery characteristics allows for the creation of vertex lists. These lists were imported into NodeXL for visual and cluster analysis and assessed through associated centrality metrics calculated by the program. Usage of the program in this manner allowed for the identification of trading patterns and understanding elements of how and why trademarks were likely utilized. Future phases of this project seek to expand upon the entry data initially used for the SNA through the incorporation of iconographic information for trademarked vessels and also move beyond analysis of mainly figured pots for broader SNA. Additionally, other marks found on Greek pottery including bath notations, signatures, stamps, and means of branding show promise for the creation of further datasets that can be transformed into vertex lists of NodeXL’s SNA.