Ancient regional transportation infrastructures as co-evolving complex systems: a multiplex network approach

Abstract

Network theory has demonstrated to be an invaluable tool for studying complex systems, and it has been widely used in many disciplines. Archaeology is no exception. Ancient transportation infrastructures (TIs) are often represented as networks of interacting settlements. However, these various TIs are different in nature, and the network they form requires a different approach. Here we show that ancient TIs as a whole can be characterized by a multiplex. After an analysis of the dynamic performance and structural properties of the individual road and river networks of Southern Etruria and Latium Vetus in the Iron Age (950 − 580 BC), we overlap both TIs by regarding them as layers in a multiplex. We then study the multiplex with the aim to assess how good the interplay between layers is. Our work thus serves as a case study of an empirical multiplex network. We prove that the tools we use are good to characterize ancient TIs as one multiplex and could become very powerful if further studied and refined.